do my level best, boy."

Jim pressed his hand again.

"Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't know that there were such
men in the world as you!"

For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums
grow into a sturdy manhood in his new environment. He snapped at every
suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not
only discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he
invented new machinery for its working that doubled the market output.
Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was
paying a steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had
made just one trip to New York and secretly returned to the police every
stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the
time and place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from
the workshop on the east side before his sensational act and made good
his departure for the South.

The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built
in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his
blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire
sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which
he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which overlooks the
valley toward Asheville.

The Doctor had lent Jim the blue-prints of his own home and he was
quietly duplicating it with loving care. His wife might refuse to see
him but he could build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't
refuse it.

With childlike obedience Nance followed him every day and watched the
workmen rear the beautiful structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful
hands. The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only the Doctor
knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he kept his own counsel.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE BABY

The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost buds into full
bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's bungalow. The martins that built each
year in the little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were
circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September
day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for
their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut
burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer
had begun. Not a cloud flecked the skies.

A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled an