ness. But in
that moment he knew that he should never go back to Austin. That he
should live and die in the home of his fathers. And that his work was
here.

He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion. "Mother, you
and Cousin Sulie mustn't. I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll
spoil me with softness and ease."

"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she told him. "Did Eric meet
you at the station?"

"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped in to see old Peter
before I came up. I can pull him through, but I shall have to have some
nurses."

And now big Ben, at an even trot, carried Richard to the Playhouse. Toby,
mad with gladness at the return of his master, raced ahead.

Up in the pretty pink and white room lay Beulah. No longer plump and
blooming, but wasted and wan with dry lips and hollow eyes.

Eric had said to Richard, "If she dies I shall die, too."

"She is not going to die."

And now he said it again, cheerfully, to the wasted figure in the bed. "I
have come to make you well, Beulah."

But Beulah was not at all sure that she wanted to be--well. She was too
tired. She was tired of Eric, tired of her mother, tired of taking
medicine, tired of having to breathe.

So she shut her eyes and turned away.

Eric sat by the bed. "Dear heart," he said, "it is Dr. Dicky."

But she did not open her eyes.

In the days that followed Richard fought to make his words come true. He
felt that if Beulah died it would, in some way, be his fault. He was
aware that this was a morbid state of mind, but he could not help the way
he felt. Beulah's life would be the price of his self-respect.

But it was not only for Beulah's life that he fought, but for the lives
of others. He had nurses up from Baltimore and down from New York. He had
experts to examine wells and springs and other sources of water supply.
He had a motor car that he might cover the miles quickly, using old Ben
only for short distances. Toby, adapting himself to the car, sat on the
front seat with the wind in his face, drunk with the excitement of it.

When Nancy spoke of the expense to which Richard was putting himself, he
said, "I have saved something, mother, and Eric and the rest can pay."

Surely in those days St. Michael needed his sword, for the fight was to
the finish. Night and day the battle waged. Richard went from bedside to
bedside, coming always last to Beulah in the shadowed pink and white room
at