turning in from an elbow up the
road, Ambrose beheld the one person whom above all others his desire had
been to escape.

The figure was occupying the entire seat of a buggy, but was driving
along apparently so lost in thought as to seem oblivious of anything or
anybody in his vicinity.

"Morning, Ambrose," Doctor Webb began, however, as he appeared directly
alongside the other gig, and yet there was nothing either in his tone or
manner to suggest that he thought it unusual for a young man to be
turning his back upon his natural field of labour at this hour of the
morning to drive off in exactly the opposite direction.

"Morning," Ambrose returned, warily attempting to creep past without
further conversation. For if the doctor should open the broadside of
his humour the secret of his journey might yet be wrested from him.
Nevertheless, although the older man had stopped his horse too
deliberately to be ignored, he showed no present desire to ask
questions. Indeed, the usual smile had disappeared from his kind face,
and his deeply lined eyes appeared anxious and worried. Just such a look
Ambrose had seen while the doctor sat watching by the bedside of a
critically ill patient.

"What troubles you, doctor?" he inquired.

In answer the man leaned across from his buggy, taking one of Ambrose's
lean hands in his, and, unaccustomed to a touch with such magnetic power
in it, a kind of electric thrill passed through the susceptible boy.

"It's you I've been troubling about lately, my son," Doctor Webb
answered, "and now it seems as if Providence had just sent you along for
me to speak to this morning. I've brought you out of children's
diseases, chicken pox, measles and the like, but I've been seein'
symptoms in you lately that have made me powerful uneasy, 'cause in this
trouble it ain't in my power to help you through."

Ambrose's tongue was thickening, and his Adam's apple moving
convulsively. "Is the disease so serious, then?" he whispered, feeling a
hitherto unsuspected though general weakness creeping over him.

The doctor bowed his great head until his double, treble chin rested
upon his shirt bosom, concealing his face from view. "Sometimes it's
fatal, my boy," he returned, appearing so moved that his big voice
sounded hoarse and unnatural. "It's true there's some that gets over it,
but nobody ain't ever _quite_ the same afterward."

Ambrose was trying to keep his knees from knocking together. "How have I
sho