and rest, more for the stranger's sake than for Jacqueline's.

"I fear my biceps are less creditable than yours," he smiled once,
panting a little. "Or it is the breath, perhaps. One grows older,
unfortunately."

As he spoke he coughed slightly, and Jacqueline looked with quick
understanding at his thin face. She had heard such a cough before. The
White Plague was one of the enemies which Mrs. Kildare fought untiringly
and unceasingly in her domain.

"I am afraid this effort is not good for you," she murmured.

He shrugged deprecatingly, as if to say, "What does it matter?"

The gesture was oddly familiar to Jacqueline. She had seen Philip Benoix
shrug in just that way. Indeed, there were other things about this man
that seemed oddly familiar. She looked at him, puzzled. The lantern
showed him dressed in coarse jeans, unkempt, unshaven. Yet his clear,
well-modulated, slightly accented speech proved him no genuine
mountaineer. Perhaps the cough accounted for his presence in the
mountains.--But his appearance of familiarity?

Suddenly Jacqueline placed him. It was the man she had seen outside the
window of the meeting-house, listening so absorbedly to Philip's sermon.

"You're the school-teacher, aren't you?" she asked.

"At your service," he replied with a slight, courteous formality that
again reminded her of Philip.

"I saw you at church to-night, and wondered why you did not come in."

"I am not a Christian," he explained.

"Oh, but that doesn't matter! That is just why Philip--Mr. Benoix, I
mean--has come up here. To make Christians."

The other smiled faintly. "The few Christians of my acquaintance have
been born, and not made.--Now, shall we start again?"

They came at last to the first of two small cabins, whose door the man
kicked open. They deposited their now unconscious burden upon a bed, one
of several that stood in a neat, white row, each with curtains about it.

"Why, it's a regular dormitory! Is yours a boarding-school?"

He shook his head. "My hospital extension. It is easier to take care of
sick scholars here than at their homes, and I have often sick scholars.
None at present, however. We have room here for several patients, as you
see, and soon I hope to be able to build another house for women.
Obstetrical cases," he explained, rather absently. While he spoke he was
removing Channing's bandage. "Hum! The shot has fortunately missed the
patella, but it must come out." He rose and began