He felt his pulse. He questioned his mamma, and cross-examined the nurse, and looked grave and very much annoyed; and then bethought him of something to be tried; and having given his directions to the maid, he went home in haste, and returned in half an hour with the something in a phial--a few drops in water, and little man sat up, leaning on his Wapsie's arm, and 'took it very good,' his nurse said, approvingly; and he looked at them all wonderingly, for two or three moments, and so tired; and they laid him down again, and then his spoken dreams began once more. Doctor Buddle was dark and short in his answers to voluble little Mrs. Wylder--though, of course, quite respectful--and the vicar saw him down the narrow stairs, and they turned into the study for a moment, and, said Buddle, in an under tone-- 'He's very ill--I can say nothing else.' And there was a pause. The little colour he had receded from the vicar's face, for the looks and tones of good-natured Buddle were not to be mistaken. He was reading little Fairy's death warrant. 'I see, doctor--I see; you think he'll die,' said the vicar, staring at him. 'Oh doctor, my little Fairy!' The doctor knew something of the poor vicar's troubles--of course in a village most things of the kind _are_ known--and often, in his brisk, rough way, he thought as, with a nod and a word, he passed the lank cleric, under the trees or across the common, with his bright, prattling, sunny-haired little boy by the hand--or encountered them telling stories on the stile, near the castle meadow--what a gleam of sunshine was always dancing about his path, in that smiling, wayward, loving little fellow--and now a long Icelandic winter was coming, and his path was to know that light no more. 'With children, you know, I--I always say there's a chance--but you are right to look the thing in the face--and I'll be here the first call in the morning; and you know where to find me, in the meantime;' and the doctor shook hands very hard with the vicar at the hall-door, and made his way homeward--the vicar's eyes following him till he was out of sight. Then William Wylder shut the hall-door, and turned about. Little Fairy's drum was hanging from a peg on the hat-stand--the drum that was to sound no more in the garden, or up and down the hall, with the bright-haired little drummer's song. There would be no more interruption now--the vicar would write his sermons undisturbed; no more consolations claimed--no more broken toys to be mended--some of the innocent little rubbish lay in the study. It should never move from that--nor his drum--nor that little hat and cape, hanging on their peg, with the tiny boots underneath.