ollowed was a trying one, and the Guest Rooms were
never empty. I like to record that John Flint put his shoulder to the
wheel and became Madame's right hand man and Westmoreland's faithful
ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise, and his entrance
into a room never startled the most nervous patient. He went on
innumerable errands, and he performed countless small services that in
themselves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a great
total.

"He may have only one leg," said Westmoreland, when Flint had helped
him all of one night with a desperately ill millworker, "but he
certainly has two hands; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he's
dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to the point. Father,
Something knew what It was about when you and I were allowed to drag
that tramp out of the teeth of death! Yes, yes, I'm certainly glad and
grateful we were allowed to save John Flint."

From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient a liking which
grew with his years. Absent-minded as he was, he could thereafter
always remember to find such things as he thought might interest him.
Appleboro laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some small
butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else to put them,
clapped them under his hat, and then forgot all about them; until he
lifted his hat to some ladies and the swarm of insects flew out.

Without being asked, and as unostentatiously as he did everything
else, Flint had taken his place in church every Sunday.

"Because it'd sort of give you a black eye if I didn't," he explained.
"Skypiloting's your lay, father, and I'll see you through with it as
far as I can. I couldn't fall down on any man that's been as white to
me as you've been."

I must confess that his conception of religion was very, very hazy,
and his notions of church services and customs barbarous. For
instance, he disliked the statues of the saints exceedingly. They
worried him.

"I can't seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts," he confessed. "Any
more than I'd be stuck on a dame with whiskers. It don't somehow look
right to me. Put the he-saints in pants instead of those brown kimonas
with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I'd have more respect for
'em."

When I tried to give him some necessary instructions, and to penetrate
the heathen darkness in which he seemed immersed, he listened with the
utmost respect and attention--and wrinkled his brow painfully,