eplied, "but to please you, I'll tell you the truth. I'm homesick."

"Yes?"

"And this Mrs. Aydelot was a Virginia woman."

"Yes?"

"Well, I'm a true son of Virginia, and I thought it might make me happy to
hear about somebody from--"

"You are a magnificent liar," Jim broke in.

"Evidently it's better to have you talk about your neighbors than your
medical advisor tonight," Carey retorted.

"Oh, I won't say a word more," Jim declared.

"More Ananias magnificence! Do you suppose the Aydelots will be down
before we go away?" the doctor asked.

"We?"

"Yes, I am going to take you with me, or give you a quieting powder when I
leave here. On your own declaration you'd do anything to get back to
strength and work. Now, the only way to get well, with or without a
physician, is to get well. And you'll never do that by using up a little
more strength every day than you store up the night before. Men haven't
sense enough to be invalids. Nothing else is such a menace to human life
as the will of the man who owns that life. You'll obey my will for a month
or two."

"You are a--doctor, Carey. No, the Aydelots won't be down before we go
away, because Virginia has been sick ever since that awful trip to Carey's
Crossing," Jim said sadly.

"Why haven't you told me?" Carey's voice was hardly audible.

"Because Asher just told me today, and because you took no interest in
them."

"Sickness is a doctor's interest, always," Carey replied in a stern voice.
And then the two sat in silence while the night shadows darkened the
little cabin.

* * * * *

As soon as Shirley was able to ride, he went up to Carey's Crossing for a
two months' stay, and the Aydelots were left far away from the edge of
civilization. A heavy snowfall buried all the trails and the world, the
happy, busy world, forgot these two holding their claim on the grim
wilderness frontier.

In after years they often talked of the old pioneer days, but of this one
winter they spoke but rarely.

"We lived alone with each other and God," Virginia said once. "He walked
beside us on the prairie and made our little sod house His sanctuary.
Those were consecrated days to Asher and me, like the stormy days of our
first love in the old war times, and the first hours of our baby's life.
We were young and full of hope and belief in the future, and we loved each
other. But we had need to have shoes of iron and brass, as Moses