e door. She was magnificent in her height and
dignity. Even Ebenezer felt almost ashamed of what he had to say; but
still the public purse must be regarded.

"You can't bring in a bill for services," he announced. "If he's on the
town, he'll have to go right into the Poorhouse with the rest."

Mary made no answer. She stood there a second, looking at him, and he
remarked to Eli, "I guess you might drive on."

But Mattie, following Mary up to the house, to talk it over, tried the
door in vain.

"My land!" she ejaculated, "if she ain't bolted it!" So the nurse and
her patient were left to themselves.

As to the rest of the story, I tell it as we hear it still in Tiverton.
At first, it was reckoned among the miracles; but when the new doctor
came, he explained that it accorded quite honestly with the course of
violated nature, and that, with some slight pruning here and there, the
case might figure in his books. What science would say about it, I do
not know; tradition was quite voluble.

It proved a very long time before Johnnie grew better, and in all those
days Mary Dunbar was a happy woman. She stepped about the house, setting
it in order, watching her charge, and making delicate possets for him to
take. When the "herb-man" came, she turned him away from the door with a
regal courtesy. It was not so much that she despised his knowledge, as
that he knew no more than she, and this was her patient. The young
doctor in Tiverton told her afterwards that she had done a dangerous
thing in not calling in some accredited wearer of the cloth; but Mary
did not think of that. She went on her way of innocence, delightfully
content. And all those days, Johnnie Veasey, as soon as he came out of
his fever, lay there and watched her with eyes full of a listless
wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where the
unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors
called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which admitted
no appeal.

"I've got sickness here," she would say, standing in the doorway
confronting them. "He's too weak to see anybody. I guess I won't ask you
in."

But one day, the minister appeared, his fat gray horse climbing
painfully up from the Gully Road. It was a warm afternoon; and as soon
as Mary saw him, she went out of her house, and closed the door behind
her. When he had tied his horse, he came toward her, brushing the dust
of the road from his irreproachable bla