professional attention.

Not until Doris had helped him into the wheel-chair did he realize how
weak he was.

Out on the veranda, his weakness, the pallid faces of the other
convalescents, and even Doris herself, were forgotten as he gazed
across the city and beyond to the sunlit spaces softly glowing beneath
a cloudless sky. Sunlight! He had never known how much it meant,
until then. He breathed deep. His dark eyes closed. Life, which he
had hitherto valued only through sheer animal instinct, seemed to mean
so much more than he had ever imagined it could. Yet not in any
definite way, nor through contemplating any definite attainment. It
was simply good to be alive--to feel the pleasant, natural warmth of
the sun--to breathe the clear, keen air. And all his curiosity as to
what the world might look like--for to one who has come out of the
eternal shadows the world is ever strange--was drowned in the supreme
indifference of absolute ease and rest. It seemed to him as though he
were floating midway between the earth and the sun, not in a weird
dream wherein the subconscious mind says, "This is not real; I know
that I dream"; but actual, in that Pete could feel nothing above nor
beneath him. Being of a very practical turn of mind he straightway
opened his eyes and was at once conscious of the arm of the wheel-chair
beneath his hand and the blanket across his knees.

He was not aware that some of the patients were gazing at him
curiously--that gossip had passed his name from room to room and that
the papers had that morning printed a sort of revised sequel to the
original story of "The Spider Mystery"--as they chose to call it.

Doris glanced at her watch. "We'll have to go in," she said, rising
and adjusting Pete's pillow.

"Oh, shucks! We jest come out!"

"You've been asleep," said Doris.

Pete shook his head. "Nope. But I sure did git one good rest. Doc
Andover calls this a vacation, eh? Well, then I guess I got to go back
to work--and it sure is work, holdin' down that bed in there--and
nothin' to do but sleep and eat and--but it ain't so bad when you're
there. Now that there cow-bunny with the front teeth--"

"S-sh!" Doris flushed, and Pete glanced around, realizing that they
were not alone.

"Well, I reckon we got to go back to the corral!" Pete sighed heavily.

Back in bed he watched Doris as she made a notation on the chart of his
"case." He frowned irritably when she took his temperatu