e said, listening. "Well, I'll be
off now."

"Yer ain't a goin' ter do nothin' o' the kind," interrupted Susie, who
had just entered with another plate. "There's plenty tea left an' if
there ain't I kin make more. Ye jist bide there till I brings yer some
grub. Ye're dead weary an' needs it bad."

"Do stay," I sought to persuade him.

"Thank you, you are very kind," he said.

One could see that for the moment he didn't care whether he had anything
to eat or not, yet he managed to do fair justice to Susie's cooking.

"I am feeling a great deal better now," he soon announced. "I think I was
rather fagged out. We came back so early because I found I was no longer
needed. I am ever so much obliged to you. I'm afraid I am not very good
company to-night and I will be back early in the morning. That plaster
cast is getting a little loose. We will split it down to-morrow and have
a good look at things."

Mrs. Barnett had risen also and was looking at him. In her eyes I
detected something that was a very sweet, motherly sympathy. Her quick
intuition had shown her that something had gone entirely wrong. Her smile
was so kind and friendly that it seemed to dissolve away something hard
that had come over the surface of the man.

"Isn't there anything that we can do for you?" she asked.

"Nothing!" he exclaimed. "What can any one expect to do? What is the use
of keeping on trying when one has to be forever bucking against ignorance
and stupidity? There is nothing the matter with me. Just a dead woman and
baby, that is all. Just a poor, hard-working creature that has scarcely
known a moment of real happiness in this world. She had five little ones
already, clinging to her skirts, and a lot of stupid neighbors. I know
the kind of advice she got from those silly old women. 'No use callin' in
th' doctor. Them things comes on all right if yer has patience. They
doctors does dreadful things. I's had seven an' here I be, an' no doctor
ever nigh me.' Oh! I can hear the poor fools speaking, and naturally she
took their advice. Then, of course, when she was gasping for breath and
beginning to grow cold they sent for me, thirty miles away, and when I
landed they told me it was all over, and I found them moaning, with a
wild-eyed man huddled up in a corner hardly able to understand, and a lot
of little ones crying for food."

He stopped and wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and looked around
him, without appearing to see any of us