more. It cost twenty dollars!"

Courtland stepped gravely toward her. "Suppose you leave that to me," he
said, gently. "I think I know a place where they would look after the
matter for you reasonably and let you pay later or take the cot in
exchange, you know, anything you wish. Would you like me to arrange the
matter for you?"

"Oh, if you would!" said the girl, wearily. "But it is asking a great
deal of a stranger."

"It's nothing. I can look after it on my way home. Just tell me what you
wish."

"Oh, the very simplest there is!"--she caught her breath--"white if
possible, unless it's more expensive. But it doesn't matter, anyway,
now. There'll have to be a _place_ somewhere, too. Some time I will take
him back and let him lie by father and mother. I can't now. It's two
hundred miles away. But there won't need to be but one carriage. There's
only me to go."

He looked his compassion, but only asked, "Is there anything else?"

"Any special clergyman?" asked the doctor, kindly.

She shook her head sadly. "We hadn't been to church yet. I was too
tired. If you know of a minister who would come."

"It's tough luck," said the doctor again as they went down-stairs
together, "to see a nice, likely little chap like that taken away so.
And I operated this afternoon on a hardened old reprobate around the
corner here, that's played the devil to everybody, and he's going to
pull through! It does seem strange. It ain't the way I should run the
universe, but I'm thundering glad I 'ain't got the job!"

Courtland walked on through the busy streets, thinking that sentence
over. He had a dim current of inner perception that suggested there
might be another way of looking at the matter; a possibility that the
wicked old reprobate had yet something more to learn of life before he
went beyond its choices and opportunities; a conviction that if he were
called to go he had rather be the little child in his purity than the
old man in his deviltry.

The sudden cutting down of this lovely child had startled and shocked
him. The bereavement of the girl cut him to the heart as if she had
belonged to him. It brought the other world so close. It made what had
hitherto seemed the big worth-while things of life look so small and
petty, so ephemeral! Had he always been giving himself utterly to things
that did not count, or was this a perspective all out of proportion, a
distorted brain again, through nervous strain and over-exertion?