ough or
important enough to bring a big doctor from my home to do this thing
for you, all that I could do alone. So here I stand with, I solemnly
believe, a precious gift and I--I--cannot give it to you because--you
won't trust a woman!"

Marcia Lowe was talking far and beyond Morley; he stared bewildered at
her, but something within himself was reaching out and touching, with
soul-intensity, the tragic appeal from the little woman opposite.

"Uncle Theodore Starr came here because he loved his kind and felt that
you all needed him most. Because you had no choice, he believed you
would accept him. Can you remember how he worked among you? served you
and died for you?"

"I--do, mum!" An old sense of gratitude gave force to the words.

"Well, I feel as he did, only I want to mend your poor, sick bodies;
make you strong enough to want to help yourselves like men and women!
I want you to know that you have _souls_."

But now Martin was lost again. The stare settled on his face and only
the hypnotism of the woman across the hearth guided him. Marcia Lowe
saw this, and grew desperate.

"Oh! dear, what shall I do?" she cried helplessly. "Can I say anything
that will make you understand? The thing I have is safe and sure. It
might go wrong with you--only _might_--but I want, I must have, your
consent. Just suppose it did go wrong with you, but that you knew it
would help hundreds of others--would you be willing to try?"

Morley did not attempt an answer.

"Let me put it another way!" and now the little doctor arose and stood
in the full glow of the fire, while the roar of the wind and the
flaring of the red light filled the room with sound and colour. The
slim, pale woman looked very weak and small to be the leading actor in
this tragic drama of the hills, and the big, stupidly staring man
opposite seemed very insignificant as a great sacrifice.

"See, I will put it this way. They call me the Cup-o'-Cold-Water Lady
because--I give them all a little drink of water and it makes them
better! I made the little Hope boy well; ask Liza, she knows. I gave
your Sandy a cup of cold water and it helped his throat--I could have
helped him more, poor boy, if he had not gone away. Martin Morley, I
want to give _you_ a cup of cold water--oh! please trust me! You must
do what I ask you to do--just for one little week. It will be hard,
but I will watch with you and share every suffering hour. I will nurse
you and c