rough the roof, served as a chimney. When he lifted the latch
he was quite decided no one, after all, was at home.

Upon entering the cabin a shocking scene presented itself. The mother
of the family lay upon the bed with wide-open stare. Doctor Grenfell's
practiced eye told him she was dead. The father, a Scotch fisherman
and trapper, was stretched upon the floor, helplessly ill, and a hasty
examination proved that he was dying. Five frightened, hungry, cold
little children were huddled in a corner.

That night the father died, though every effort was made to revive him
and save his life. Grenfell and his crew gave the man and woman as
decent a Christian burial as the wilderness and conditions would
permit, and when all was over the Doctor found five small children on
his hands.

An uncle of the children lived upon the coast and this uncle
volunteered to take one of them into his home. The other four Doctor
Grenfell carried south on the hospital ship. There was no proper
provision for their care at St. Anthony, his headquarters hospital,
and he advertised in a New England paper for homes for them. One
response was received, and this from the wife of a New England farmer,
offering to provide for two. The Doctor sent two to the farm, the
other two remaining at St. Anthony hospital.

The next child to come to him was a baby of three years. The child's
father had died and the mother married a widower with a large family
of his own. He was a hard-hearted rascal, and the mother was a selfish
woman with small love for her baby. The man declined to permit her to
take it into his home and she left it in a mud hut, a cellar-like
place, with no other floor than the earth. A kind-hearted woman, who
lived near by, ran in now and again to see the baby and to take it
scraps of food and give it some care. She could not adopt it, for she
and her husband were scarce able to feed the many mouths in their own
family.

So alone this tiny little girl of three lived in the mud hut through
the long days and the longer and darker nights. There was no mother's
knee at which to kneel; no one to teach her to lisp her first prayer;
no one to tuck her snugly into a little white bed; no one to kiss her
before she slept. O, how lonely she must have been! Think of those
chilly Labrador nights, when she huddled down on the floor in the
ragged blanket that was her bed! How many nights she must have cried
herself to sleep with loneliness and fear!