Activity has saved them--activity _is_
growth, it is life--it is everything!"

The old man shook his head slowly:

"They are not saved, my dear boy--none of us are--who depend on
outward things for your happiness. Outward things change--vanish.
'As a man thinketh in his heart--so is he!'--that is the secret of
triumphant living. As a man thinketh. These fellows of yours--for I
know this lacrosse team has been one of the many ways you took of
sapping your energy--do not think. They play, run, scrap, cheer, but
there's no meditation--no turning inward of the thoughts, no mental
progress.

"It would not be natural for growing boys, alive to their fingertips,
to sit yapping like lazy collie dogs, just thinking," said the young
doctor heatedly. "They want avenues of self-expression, and in
lacrosse and hockey they find it."

"Artificial aids to happiness--every one of them--crutches for lame
souls--the Kingdom of Heaven is within you," the old doctor rambled
on, "but it is all a part of this great new country--this big west is
new and crude and distinct--only the primary colors are used in the
picture, there are no half tones, no shadows, and above all--or
perhaps I should say behind all--no background. A thing is good or
bad--black or white--blue or red. We are mostly posters here in this
great big, dazzling country."

In the silence that fell on them, the young man's mind went limping
back to the old doctor's first words--the dreadful, fateful,
significant words. He had said it--said the thing that if it were true
would exile him from the world he loved! On him the ban had fallen!

"I suppose," said he, standing behind his chair, whose back he held
with nervous fingers, "there is no chance that you might be mistaken.
It is hard for me to believe this. I am so strong--so well--so much
alive, except my cough--I am as well as ever I was, and the cough is a
simple thing--this seems impossible to me!"

The old doctor had gone to the window to watch the throng of boys
and girls who raced past on their way to the hill for an evening's
sleigh-ride.

"It always seems impossible," he said, with the air of a man who is
totally disassociated from human affairs, and is simply stating an
interesting fact, "that is part of the disease, and a very attractive
part too. The people who have it, never think they have--even to the
last they are hopeful--and sure they will be better tomorrow. No, I am
afraid I am not mistaken. You kn