guilty. They dug the ground from under my feet and branded me as a
quack. They broke me, they tried to have my license to practice revoked.
But they failed in that. That was three years ago. I hung on, but I
starved. So when I speak in what may seem a bitter way of the narrow
traditions of my profession, you know my reason is fairly well grounded."

"But you saved the little girl!"

It was too dark for him to see her eyes. The tears that lay in them
could not drop their balm upon his heart.

"She's as good as new," said he cheerfully, fingering the inner pocket
of his coat. "She writes to me right along. Here's a picture-card that
followed me here, mailed from the home that the man who gave his tough
old hide to mend her found for her when she was well. She lives in
Oklahoma now, and her sweet fortitude under her misfortune has been a
remembrance to sustain me over many a hungry day."

"But you saved the little girl!" Agnes repeated with unaccountable
insistence, as if trying to beat down the injustice of his heavy penance
with that argument.

And then he saw her bow her head upon her folded arms like a little
child, and weep in great sobs which came rackingly as if torn from the
core of her heart.

Dr. Slavens picked up his hat, put it on, got to his feet, and took a
stride away from her as if he could not bear the sight of her poignant
sympathy. Then he turned, came back, and stooped above her, laying his
hand upon her hair.

"Don't do that!" he pleaded. "All that's gone, all that I've missed, is
not worth a single tear. You must not make my troubles your own, for at
the worst there's not enough for two."

She reached out her tear-wet hand and clung to his, wordless for a
little while. As it lay softly within his palm he stroked it soothingly
and folded it between his hands as if to yield it freedom nevermore.
Soon her gust of sorrow passed. She stood beside him, breathing brokenly
in the ebb of that overmastering tide. In the opening of the broad
valley the moon stood redly. The wind trailed slowly from the hills to
meet it, as if to warm itself at its beacon-fire.

"You saved the little girl!" said she again, laying her warm hand for a
moment against his cheek.

In that moment it was well for Dr. Warren Slavens that the lesson of his
hard years was deep within his heart; that the continence and abnegation
of his past had ripened his restraint until, no matter how his lips
might yearn to the sweets whic