her. Tish was standing in the shadow, leaning on her cane, and she didn't know from Adam what was the matter, but she was covered with goose flesh.
"Nonsense!" said Miss Linda Smith suddenly. "She's been dozing."
Miss Blake got up and steadied herself by the back of the chair, looking across at the other woman.
"I'm afraid not, Miss Smith," she said. "You—remember when—when the orderlies carried up poor old—Johnson. They—laid him on the table in the mortuary, didn't they?"
"Yes," said Miss Smith, half smiling. "They usually do. They don't generally throw 'em out the window."
Miss Blake clutched the chair tighter, Tish says, and her lips trembled.
"I want you to come with me and see," she said. "We—covered the body with a sheet, didn't we?"
"Yes," Miss Smith stopped smiling.
"And then you left, and I was alone. I—I tried not to mind. I haven't been here very long. But I was afraid, after a minute or two, that I was—getting faint. I—seemed to fed eyes on me."
Some of the girls nodded as if they understood.
"So I went to the window and threw it up to get air. Then I thought I heard something moving behind me. I—I felt it, like the eyes, rather than heard it. And—I didn't look around at once; I couldn't. It was so far from ' the rest of the house, and—I was alone with it. And when I turned—" She stopped and moistened her lips with her tongue, and her face was ghastly— 'Ht was gone. Miss Smith. Gone!"
Now Tish isn't easy to frighten, but at that moment the appendix woman gave a deep groan and she says her heart jumped once or twice and turned over in her chest. The nurses were all standing huddled together in a little group, and one of them kept looking over her shoulder.
"Gone!" said Miss Smith, and sat down in a chair suddenly, as if her legs had given way. Wha—what have you done?"
Sent for Jacobs, the night watchman," one o£ the nurses explained. "Doctor Grimm and Doctor Sands are in the operating room — a night case, and the medical internes had a row with Mr. Harrison and left last night. We'll be in nice shape if G ward gets busy."
"What's G ward?" Tish asked, edging over to Miss Lewis.
"G ward," said Miss Lewis coolly, "G ward is where the stork drops that part of the population that has only half the legal number of parents. You'll have to go back to bed, Miss Carberry."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," said Tish, and glared at her.
Tish told us the rest of the story the next morning, sitting propped up in bed with Aggie on one side and me on the other. We'd brought her some creamed sweetbreads, but she was so excited she could not eat The change in her was horrible; she had passed through a crisis, and she showed it.
"You'd better let us take you home, Tish," Aggie pleaded, when Tish had finished. "This is no place for a nervous woman."
Tish took a mouthful of the sweetbread and made a face over it.
"Heavens," she said, "it's easy seen salt's cheap. No, I am not going home. I shall stay to see the end of this if it's the end of me."
"Listen, Tish," Aggie said miserably. "Hasn't my advice always been good? Didn't I beg you on my bended knees not to buy that automobile? Didn't both Lizzie and I protest with tears against the motor boat, and you'll carry that scar till your dying day. And now—now it's spirits, Tish. Don't tell me it wasn't."
"Where's that Lewis woman?" was all Tish would say. "Speaking of spirits reminds me I haven't been rubbed with alcohol yet."
But I'd better tell Tish's story in her own words:
"Once for all, before I begin, Aggie," she ordered—Tish is a masterful woman—"you open the collar of your waist and put a pillow behind you. I'm not going to be broken in on in the middle of this by your fainting away. Faint if you want, but get ready beforehand. Lewis is not usually around when she's wanted."
"I don't want to hear it if it's as bad as that," Aggie protested, opening the neck of her waist. "Lizzie, reach me that pillow."
"I don't know that I want to hear it myself, Tish," I said. "You'd better do as Aggie says and come home. You're a wreck this morning, and I've telephoned for Tommy Andrews."
Tommy is Tish's doctor, the son of her cousin, Eliza Peabody Andrews, a nice enough boy, but frivolous. He is on the visiting staff at the hospital, and makes rounds once a day, I believe, with an attentive interne at his elbow and the prettiest nurse he can find carrying the order book.
Tish set the sweetbread on the bedside table with a bang and looked at me for an instant over her glasses.
"Don't be a fool, Lizzie," she said. "Do you think Tommy Andrews can make me do anything I don't want to? Do you think the entire connection could move me one foot if I didn't want to go?"
"You can't spend another night here," I put in, somewhat feebly.
"Can't I?" she said grimly. "Not only I can, and will, but you and Aggie are going to take turns here with me, night and night about, until this is cleared up. Mark my words, last night was not the end."
She turned over on her side then, and proceeded to have her back rubbed with alcohol. And while Miss Lewis rubbed, she told us the story.
"Miss Lewis wanted me to go back to bed," she said, when she had reached that point, "but I refused to go. (You needn't take the skin off, Miss Lewis.) I stood there in my gown, and I watched them making up their minds to go to the mortuary. That's up a narrow flight of stairs from this end of the hall, not far from this very room. Nobody was anxious to lead off, but Miss Blake seemed determined to go back and prove she hadn't been asleep, and at last they moved off huddled in a group and left me there. (You haven't got a spite against my right shoulder, have you?) Miss Lewis followed them."
"I didn't," said Miss Lewis sourly. Tish turned and looked up at her over her shoulder.
"You looked as if you were going to, and you know it," she asserted. "And don't interrupt me. Miss Lewis followed, and seeing I was felling to be left alone, and feeling somewhat creepy along the back, I followed her."
"Really—!" Miss Lewis began.
"We went up the staircase, and if you and Aggie go out and look, you'll see how it leads. There's a hall up there, with a few private rooms along one side, and a small ward across. The mortuary is up a flight of about eight steps, at the far end.
"The hall was dark, and all the light came from the mortuary. The door was open, and it seemed bright and cheerful enough. I was feeling pretty sure the black-haired girl had dozed and had a dream, when I saw Miss Smith, who was in the lead, stoop and pick something up, and hold it out to the other nurses,
" That's queer!' she said, and her eyes were fairly starting out of her head.
"What is it?" said I, limping forward.
The nurses were staring at the thing she held.
" 'It's impossible?' she muttered, 'but—that's the bandage I tied Johnson's hands together with!' Miss Lewis,
