The rising wind moaned fitfully around its bleak shell with the despairing sound of far and forever receding voices.

So strong was the impression that when the doctor and McKinstry's attending brother re-entered the room, the master still lingered beside the bed with a dazed sensation of abandonment that the doctor's practical reassuring smile could hardly dispel.
"He's doing splendidly now," he said, listening to the sleeper's more regular respiration: "and I'd advise you to go now, Mr.Ford, before he wakes, lest he might be tempted to excite himself by talking to you again.

He's really quite out of danger now.

Good-night! I'll drop in on you at the hotel when I return." The master, albeit still confused and bewildered, felt his way to the door and out into the open night.

The wind was still despairingly wrestling with the tree-tops, but the far receding voices seemed to be growing fainter in the distance, until, as he passed on, they too seemed to pass away forever.
***** Monday morning had come again, and the master was at his desk in the school house early, with a still damp and inky copy of the Star fresh from the press before him.