at a time." Then she left him, but at the
door she met him and helped to lift his heavy belongings into the house.

The room he entered was warm and brightly lighted by a pile of blazing
logs in the great chimneyplace. He walked toward it and stretched his
hands to the fire--a generous fire--the mountain home's luxury.

Something was cooking in the ashes on the hearth which sent up a savory
odor most pleasant and appealing to the hungry man. The meagre boy stood
near, also warming his little body, on which his coarse garments hung
limply. He kept his great eyes fixed on David's face in a manner
disconcerting, even in a child, had Thryng given his attention to it,
but at the moment he was interested in other things. Dropped thus
suddenly into this utterly alien environment, he was observing the girl
and the old woman as intently, though less openly, as the boy was
watching him.

Presently he felt himself uncannily the object of a scrutiny far
different from the child's wide-eyed gaze, and glancing over his
shoulder toward the corner from which the sensation seemed to emanate,
he saw in the depths of an old four-posted bed, set in their hollow
sockets and roofed over by projecting light eyebrows, a pair of keen,
glittering eyes.

"Yas, you see me now, do ye?" said a high, thin voice in toothless
speech. "Who be ye?"

His physician's feeling instantly alert, he stepped to the bedside and
bent over the wasted form, which seemed hardly to raise the clothing
from its level smoothness, as if she had lain motionless since some
careful hand had arranged it.

"No, ye don't know me, I reckon. 'Tain't likely. Who be ye?" she
iterated, still looking unflinchingly in his eyes.

"Hit's a gentleman who knows Doctah Hoyle, mothah. He sent him. Don't
fret you'se'f," said the girl soothingly.

"I'm not one of the frettin' kind," retorted the mother, never taking
her eyes from his face, and again speaking in a weak monotone. "Who be
ye?"

"My name is David Thryng, and I am a doctor," he said quietly.

"Where be ye from?"

"I came from Canada, the country where Doctor Hoyle lives."

"I reckon so. He used to tell 'at his home was thar." A pallid hand was
reached slowly out to him. "I'm right glad to see ye. Take a cheer and
set. Bring a cheer, Sally."

But the girl had already placed him a chair, which he drew close to the
bedside. He took the feeble old hand and slipped his fingers along to
rest lightly on the wrist.

"Y