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Then he began
to say, in a dull voice, as if repeating a letter from dictation: "Owing
to a leakage in the hold of this vessel, the sugar had set, and become
converted into rock. It needed hacking--"
He was quite unconscious. It had been his business to examine some such
cargo of sugar in the Port of London.
"How long has he been like this?" the mother asked the landlady.
"He got home at six o'clock on Monday morning, and he seemed to sleep
all day; then in the night we heard him talking, and this morning he
asked for you. So I wired, and we fetched the doctor."
"Will you have a fire made?"
Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still.
The doctor came. It was pneumonia, and, he said, a peculiar erysipelas,
which had started under the chin where the collar chafed, and was
spreading over the face. He hoped it would not get to the brain.
Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse. She prayed for William, prayed that he
would recognise her. But the young man's face grew more discoloured.


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