ent friends now, and the query, "Another record-breaking fee?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow," he replied. "Don't forget, seven o'clock
train for New York. Good-night."

"Good-night, doctor."

Donald turned away from the desk, and for a moment stood motionless.

"God bless her brave, trusting, little heart," he said half aloud.

And he was not thinking of Miss Merriman.

CHAPTER XX

THE ANSWER

More than once Rose caught herself wondering if, after that day was
done, she would ever be able to smile again. In obedience to the
doctor's prescription for Big Jerry, which it was ever her first duty to
fill, she never looked towards him--as he sat bent over before the fire,
eyes heavy with pain, breath coming in deep rasps, but lips set firmly
against a word of complaint--without sending him a message of love and
compassion through the intangible medium of that smile. Yet, as the
weary hours dragged on with plodding feet, it seemed to her as though
each new one was not an interest payment on a fund of happiness stored
within her heart, but a heavy dipping into the principal itself.

Before she had taken her early morning departure back up to the mountain
over the sodden, slippery path, she had received a telegram that Donald
had sent off as his last act before yielding to the lure of bed, and
which brought her the hope-engendering word that he would be with her as
soon as swift-speeding trains could bring him.

But that was yesterday. By no possibility could he reach them before the
coming evening, and surely never had the sun taken so long to make his
wintry journey across the pale blue sky.

Hour after hour Rose sat by the bedside of little Lou, and tenderly
stroked her cold small hands while she hummed unanswered lullabies, each
note of which was the chant of a wordless prayer. The sufferer lay so
white, so utterly still, save for the periods when her every breath was
a faint moan or she suddenly shook and twisted in a convulsive spasm,
that time and again the girl started up with a cry of terror frozen on
her lips but echoing in her heart, and bent fearfully over to press her
ear close against the baby's thin breast. As often it caught the barely
discernible beat of the little heart within.

The baby's eyes, now piteously crossed, had turned upward until the
starlike pupils were almost out of sight. There were long periods when
only the occasional twitching of the bloodless, childishly curved and
parted