Stella scarcely heard her husband and the doctor come in.  For a weary age she had been sitting in a low rocker, a pillow across her lap, and on that the little, tortured body swaddled with cotton soaked in olive oil, the only dressing she and Mrs. Howe could devise to ease the pain.  All those other things which had so racked her, the fight on the Tyee, the shooting of Billy Dale, they had vanished somehow into thin air before the dread fact that her baby was dying slowly before her anguished eyes.  She sat numbed with that deadly assurance, praying without hope for help to come, hopeless that any medical skill would avail when it did come.  So many hours had been wasted while a man rowed to Benton’s camp, while the Chickamin steamed to Roaring Springs, while the Waterbug came driving back.  Five hours!  And the skin, yes, even shreds of flesh, had come away in patches with Jack Junior’s clothing when she took it off.  She bent over him, fearful that every feeble breath would be his last.

She looked up at the doctor.  Fyfe was beside her, his calked boots biting into the oak floor.

“See what you can do, doc,” he said huskily.  Then to Stella:  “How did it happen?”

“He toddled away from Martha,” she whispered.  “Sam Foo had set a pan of boiling water on the kitchen floor.  He fell into it.  Oh, my poor little darling.”

They watched the doctor bare the terribly scalded body, examine it, listen to the boy’s breathing, count his pulse.  In the end he re-dressed the tiny body with stuff from the case with which a country physician goes armed against all emergencies.  He was very deliberate and thoughtful.  Stella looked her appeal when he finished.

“He’s a sturdy little chap,” he said, “and we’ll do our best.  A child frequently survives terrific shock.  It would be mistaken kindness for me to make light of his condition simply to spare your feelings.  He has an even chance.  I shall stay until morning.  Now, I think it would be best to lay him on a bed.  You must relax, Mrs. Fyfe.  I can see that the strain is telling on you.  You mustn’t allow yourself to get in that abnormal condition.  The baby is not conscious of pain.  He is not suffering half so much in his body as you are in your mind, and you mustn’t do that.  Be hopeful.  We’ll need your help.  We should have a nurse, but there was no time to get one.”

They laid Jack Junior amid downy pillows on Stella’s bed.  The doctor stood looking at him, then drew a chair beside the bed.

“Go and walk about a little, Mrs. Fyfe,” he advised, “and have your dinner.  I’ll want to watch the boy a while.”

But Stella did not want to walk.  She did not want to eat.  She was scarcely aware that her limbs were cramped and aching from her long vigil in the chair.  She was not conscious of herself and her problems, any more.  Every shift of her mind turned on her baby, the little mite she had nursed at her breast, the one joy untinctured with bitterness that was left her.  The bare chance that those little feet might never patter across the floor again, that little voice never wake her in the morning crying “Mom-mom,” drove her distracted.