The doctor had whirled quite out of sight over the hill.

"He's gone," wailed the wife--"he's gone, and Henry 'll die--oh, I know he'll die!" Then Jerome, who had been standing bewildered, not knowing whether he should or should not run and call after the doctor, and listening first to one, then to the other, collected himself.

"No, he isn't going to die, either," he said to the poor girl, who was very young; and he said it quite sharply, because he so pitied her in her innocent helplessness, and would give her courage even in a bitter dose.

He asked her, furthermore, as brusquely as Doctor Prescott himself could have done, what medicine she had in the house.

Then he bade her hasten, if she wished to help and not hurt her husband, to the nearest neighbor and beg some sweat-producing herbs--thoroughwort or sage or catnip--all of which he had heard were good for fever.
She went away, wrapped in the thick shawl which Jerome had found in a closet, and himself pinned over the wild fair head, under the quivering chin, while he quieted her with grave admonitions, as if he were her father.