take
expert nursing, awful nice food; and then, at the shortest, she would be
in bed a couple of months. She ought to go to the hospital in Stenton.
That's the real truth. I'm telling you the facts, Gordon; we can't handle
her here, she'd die on us."

Gordon only half comprehended the other's words--Clare dangerously
ill ... a question of dying, hospitals. She had suffered for so long that,
without losing his sympathy for her, it had seemed to him her inevitable
condition. It had fallen naturally upon him to care for her, guard her
against damp, prevent her from lifting objects beyond her strength. These
continuous, small attentions held an important place in his existence--he
thought about her in a mind devoted substantially to himself, and it
brought him a glow of contentment, a pleasant feeling of ministration and
importance. It had not occurred to him that Clare might grow worse, that
she might, in fact, die. The idea filled him with sudden dismay. His heart
contracted with a sharp hurt. "The hospital," he echoed dully, "Stenton."

"By rights," the doctor iterated; "of course we'll do what we can here,
she might last for a couple of years more without cutting; and then,
again, her heart might just quit. Still--"

"What would the hospital cost?" Gordon asked, almost unaware of having
pronounced the words.

"It'd be dear--two hundred and some dollars anyway, and the money on the
nail. The nursing would count up; then there would be something for
operating, if it was only a little ... a lot of things you don't allow for
would turn up."

Two hundred and more dollars! Gordon had a fleeting vision, against the
empurpling banks, the dark, sliding water, and the mountainous wall
capped with dissolving gold beyond, of a room filled with the hot glow of
kerosene lamps; he saw Jake's twitching, murderous countenance above
him.... Two hundred dollars! He had two hundred and eighty dollars in his
pocket. He had another vision--of Simmons; it was two hundred and fifty
dollars that the latter wanted, must have, to-morrow. But Simmons swiftly
faded before Clare's need, the pressure of sickness.

"She couldn't go down in the stage," he muttered, "the shaking would kill
her before ever she got there."

"I'll drive her to Stenton, Gordon," the doctor volunteered, "if you've
got the money handy."

"I've got her," Gordon Makimmon declared grimly.

"I'll take her right to the hospital and give her to the doctor in charge.
Eve