you, boy; and hang it if I want
you to suffer as I have to."

"But a man would not be a man at all if he did not think enough of
somebody to suffer," said James, and now he was thinking of poor little
Clemency, and how she had nestled up to him for protection.

"Maybe," said Doctor Gordon gloomily, "but sometimes I wonder whether it
pays in the long run to be what you call a man. Sometimes I wish that I
were a rock or a tree. I do to-night."

"You will feel better after you have had a little sleep," James said,
as the two men rose.

Suddenly one of Doctor Gordon's inexplicable changes of mood came over
him. He laughed. "If it were not so late we would go down to Georgie
K.'s," said he. "I never felt more awake. Well, I guess it's too late.
You must be dead tired yourself. I have not thanked you at all for your
rescue of the girl. She would have been down with a serious illness if
you had not gone, for she would have lain in that place being snowed
over until somebody came."

"She was mighty clever to do what she did," said James.

"Yes, she is clever," returned Doctor Gordon. "She is a good girl, and
it stings me to the very heart that she has to suffer such persecution.
Well, 'all's well that ends well.' Did it ever occur to you that God
made up to mankind for the horrors of creation, by stating that there
would be an end to it some day? Good God, if this terrible world had to
roll on to all eternity!" Doctor Gordon laughed again his unnatural
laugh. "Fancy if you were awakened to-night by the last trump," he said.
"How small everything would seem. Hang it, though, if I wouldn't try to
have a hand at that man's finish before the angel of the Lord got his
flaming sword at work."

James looked at him with terror.

"Don't mind me, boy," said Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job
is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend
with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I
think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage.
James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's
shoulder. "Thank the Lord for one thing," he said almost tenderly, "that
he sent you here. Between us we will take care of poor little Clemency
anyhow. Now go to bed, and go to sleep."

James obeyed as to the one, but he could not as to the other. He became,
as the hours wore on, so nervous that he was half-inclined to take a
sleeping powder. The room se