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The wrecked man was beginning to stir about uneasily. He murmured and muttered names, evidently those uppermost in his waking thought. Life was struggling to regain voluntary control. He was feverish. Miss Sullivan gave him from time to time spoonfuls of stimulant; his weakness and exhaustion needed this. It was a new position for her, and she managed rather awkwardly,—more awkwardly than one would have expected who knew her usual deftness. Once, when his eyes again half opened, she shrank away, and when he again became delirious and rejected his restorative and went on speaking wildly and incoherently, mingling names, words of hate and words of love and words of dreary despair, she burst into a sudden passion of excited tears and called Miranda to come immediately and relieve her. She evidently was not fit to be a calm nurse to the stranger: a fact sufficiently curious, since her temperament was quite the nursely one. But perhaps she was too much concerned for her protégé.

The afternoon hastened away. The sufferer seemed momentarily improving. He had now fallen into a quiet sleep. Mr. Dempster appeared to ask the plans of his guest—to go or not to go?