He awoke restless and depressed; and the next morning he was not well; and not quite as well the next, remaining in his room with a headache, pestered by Portlaw and retinues of servants bearing delicacies on trays.

He had developed a cold, not a very bad one, and on the third day he resumed his duties in the woods with Phelps and Baker, the surveyors, and young Hastings.

The dull, stupid physical depression hung on to him; so did his cold; and he found breathing difficult at night.  The weather had turned very raw and harsh, culminating in a flurry of snow.

Then one morning he appeared at breakfast looking so ghastly that Portlaw became alarmed.  It seemed to be rather late for that; Hamil’s face was already turning a dreadful bluish white under his host’s astonished gaze, and as the first chill seized him he rose from the table, reeling.

“I—­I am sorry, Portlaw,” he tried to say.

“What on earth have you got?” asked Portlaw in a panic; but Hamil could not speak.

They got him to the gardener’s cottage as a precautionary measure, and telephoned to Utica for trained nurses, and to Pride’s Fall for a doctor.  Meanwhile, Hamil, in bed, was fast becoming mentally irresponsible as the infection spread, involving both lungs, and the fever in his veins blazed into a conflagration.  That is one way that pneumonia begins; but it ought not to have made such brutally quick work of a young, healthy, and care-free man.  There was not much chance for him by the next morning, and less the following night when the oxygen tanks arrived.

Portlaw, profoundly shocked and still too stunned by the swiftness of the calamity to credit a tragic outcome, spent the day in a heavily bewildered condition, wandering, between meals, from his house to the cottage where Hamil lay, and back again to the telephone.

He had physicians in consultation from Utica and Albany; he had nurses and oxygen; he had Miss Palliser on the telephone, first in New York, then at Albany, and finally at Pride’s Fall, to tell her that Hamil was alive.

She arrived after midnight with Wayward.  Hamil was still breathing—­if it could be called by that name.

Toward dawn a long-distance call summoned Portlaw:  Malcourt was on the end of the wire.

“Is Hamil ill up at your place?”

“He is,” said Portlaw curtly.

“Very ill?”

“Very.”

“How ill?”

“Well, he’s not dead.”

“Portlaw, is he dying?”

“They don’t know yet.”

“What is the sickness?”

“Pneumonia.  I wish to heaven you were here!” he burst out, unable to suppress his smouldering irritation any longer.

“I was going to ask you if you wanted me—­”

“You needn’t ask such a fool question.  Your house is here for you and the servants are eating their heads off.  I haven’t had your resignation and I don’t expect it while we’re in trouble....  Mrs. Malcourt will come with you, of course.”