“And say,” went on Parker, “how are you feeling?”

“Pretty well, thank you,” replied the minister.  “I seem to be rather tired and good for nothing.  More so than I was during the worst of it.”

“No wonder.  A chap can’t go through what you did and not feel some reaction.  I expected that.  Don’t get cold, that’s all.  But what I want to know is whether you think I could leave you for a couple of days?  The Ostable County Medical Society meets at Hyannis to-morrow and I had promised myself to take it in this year.  But I don’t want to leave you, if you need me.”

Ellery insisted that he did not need anyone, was getting along finely, and would not hear of his friend’s missing the medical society’s meeting.  So the physician went.

“Good-by,” he called as he drove off.  “I guess your term is pretty nearly over.  I shall let you out of jail inside of four or five days, if you behave yourself.”

This should have been cheering news, but, somehow, John Ellery did not feel cheerful that afternoon.  The tired feeling he had spoken of so lightly was worse than he had described it, and he was despondent, for no particular reason.  That night he slept miserably and awoke with a chill to find a cold, pouring rain beating against the windows of the shanty.

He could not eat and he could not keep warm, even with the cook-stove top red hot and a blanket over his shoulders.  By noon the chill had gone and he was blazing with fever.  Still the rain and the wind, and no visitors at the ropes, not even the light-keeper.

He lay down on his bed and tried to sleep, but though he dozed a bit, woke always with a start and either a chill or fever fit.  His head began to ache violently.  And then, in the lonesomeness and misery, fear began to take hold of him.

He remembered the symptoms the doctor had warned him against, headache, fever, and all the rest.  He felt his wrists and arms and began to imagine that beneath the skin were the little bunches, like small shot, that were the certain indications.  Then he remembered how that other man had looked, how he had died.  Was he to look that way and die like that?  And he was all alone, they had left him alone.

Night came.  The rain had ceased and stars were shining clear.  Inside the shanty the minister tossed on the bed, or staggered back and forth about the two rooms.  He wondered what the time might be; then he did not care.  He was alone.  The smallpox had him in its grip.  He was alone and he was going to die.  Why didn’t some one come?  Where was Mrs. Coffin?  And Grace?  She was somewhere near him—­Parker had said so—­and he must see her before he died.  He called her name over and over again.

The wind felt cold on his forehead.  He stumbled amidst the beach grass.  What was this thing across his path?  A rope, apparently, but why should there be ropes in that house?  There had never been any before.  He climbed over it and it was a climb of hundreds of feet and the height made him giddy.  That was a house, another house, not the one he had been living in.  And there were lights all about.  Perhaps one of them was the light at the parsonage.  And a big bell was booming.  That was his church bell and he would be late for the meeting.