g her labours as much as he consistently could by changing
the nature of the copying. Now and then he refreshed her endurance and
rested her tired hand by asking her to read aloud to him several just
finished pages of his own writing, walking the floor meanwhile or
sitting tipped back in his chair with closed eyes while he listened with
ears alert for error of statement or infelicity of phrase, and she
wondered at the character of the words she read.

Of course she discovered at once what was the general subject of the
book. No essay was this, no work of fiction, no "history of art," as
Stuart had scornfully suggested. It could be only the sternest of
research and experience which dictated such sentences as these:

The especial dangers to be contended with are that the ethmoid
cells may be mistaken for the sphenoids; that we may go too low and
enter the pons and medulla; that, laterally, we may enter the
cavernous sinus, and above, that we may injure the optic nerve.

It was all more or less of a puzzle to her, but it was one which her
taskmaster never explained further than the revelations of each day
explained it. She understood that he was a scientist, that he
undoubtedly had been an operator in some surgical field or was putting
into shape the work of another in that field, but what he now was
besides a writer of technical books she had no manner of idea.

"But I really enjoy it, Father Davy," she insisted, when she came down
to him one day with hotly flushed cheeks and shaking hand after a
particularly protracted siege of copying involved and incomprehensible
material. "It's monotonous in a way, but it's intensely interesting,
too. Mr. Jefferson is so absorbed in it, it's fun to watch him. To-day
he was as happy as a boy over a letter he had just received from a
Professor Somebody, a great authority in Vienna. It seemed it absolutely
confirmed some statement he had made in a monograph he wrote last year
which had been challenged by several scientists. The way he fell to
writing his next paragraph after he had read that letter made one
imagine he was writing it in his own heart's blood. He read it aloud to
me." She laughed appreciatively at the recollection.

"Could you make anything of it?" inquired Mr. Warne with interest.

"Not very much. It was about the pituitary body;--oh, I've come to have
a great awe of the pituitary body, it seems to be responsible for so
many things. He chuckled over it like a