“Go to the head-quarters, David,” she says.  “You are needed.  Pa says so.  I will stay all day,”

“Oh, Mother Wandrell, what do you think?”

“Here is your Dr. Floddin, ask him.”

The doctor speaks sadly.  “He is much worse.  What has happened?”

“The fires went out,” answers Lockwin.

“Get some flaxseed at once.  Get a stove in here.  These fine houses kill many people.  Keep the body enswathed in the double poultice, but don’t let the emulsion touch his skin directly.  What is the effect of the medicine?  I see he has taken a little.  The bottleful is not going fast enough.”

“He has taken no medicine at all,” says Esther.  “It was spilled.”

David Lockwin, starting for head-quarters, must now attend the fixing of a stove where there is little accommodation for a stove.

“Give me the child,” says the cook, “and the fire will not go out.”

“It would be murder for me to go to head-quarters, and I believe it would be double murder,” he whispers to himself.  He is in a lamentable state.  At two o’clock, with the stove up, the flaxseed cooking, the boy warmly bandaged, the asthmatic sounds diminished, and the women certain they have administered some of the medicine to the stubborn patient, Lockwin finds that he can lie down.  He sleeps till dark, while Corkey organizes for the most tumultuous primaries that were ever held in Chicago.

With the twilight settling in upon his bed Lockwin starts into wakefulness.  He has dreamed of two-old-cat.  “Bully for the codger!” the tribe of red-faces yell.  In the other room he now hears the dismal gasps of his curly-head.

He rinses his mouth with water, not daring to ask if the worst is coming.  He knows it is not coming, else he had been called.  Yet he is not quick to enter the sick chamber.

“David, it is your duty to make him take it,” the mother says, as she goes.  “Esther, you look worse than David.”

Thus the night begins.  The child has learned to dislike the imprisonment of poultices.  The air is heavy with flaxseed.  The basin of stramonium water adds its melancholy odor to the room.

It is the first trouble Lockwin has ever seen.  He is as unready and unwilling as poor little Davy.  It is murder—­that furnace going out.  This thought comes to Lockwin over and over; perhaps the feeling of murder is because Davy is not an own son.

It is all wretched and hideous!  The slime of politics and the smell of flaxseed unite to demoralize the man.  O if Dr. Tarpion were only here!  But Davy will take no medicine; how could Tarpion help Davy?

Yes, that medicine—­ipecac!  The name has been hateful to Lockwin from childhood.

Let Corkey win the primaries!  What odds?  Will not that release Lockwin from the touching committees?  Does he wish to owe his election to a street car-company in another quarter of the city?