the Playhouse.

There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not be turned out. "Every
minute that I am away from her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems
as if when I am in sight of her I can hold her--back."

So, night after night, Richard found him in the chair by Beulah's bed,
his face shaded by his hand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile
at her.

But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a little now and then, and
sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a
flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with
strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse
covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out of
Beulah's mind forever.

There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the kitchen for the young
doctor, and Eric would go down with him and they would drink and talk,
and all that Eric said led back to Beulah.

"If there was only something that I could do for her," he said; "if I
could go out and work until I dropped, I should feel as if I were
helping. But just to sit there and see her--fade."

Again he said, "I had always thought of our living--never of dying. There
can be no future for me without her."

So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's life that Richard
strove. He grew worn and weary, but he never gave up.

Night after night, day after day, from house to house he went, along the
two roads and up into the hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome.
Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred the patient to
Crossroads, where Nancy and Sulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed
an enthusiastic hospital staff.

The mother of little Francois was the first patient that Richard lost.
She was tired and overworked, and she felt that it was good to fall
asleep. Afterward Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went out and
sat where they could look over the river and talk together.

"I told her that you were to stay with me, Francois."

"And she was glad?"

"Yes. I need a little lad in my office, and when I take the car you can
ride with me."

And thus it came about that little Francois, a sober little Francois,
with a band of black about his arm, became one of the Crossroads
household, and was made much of by the women, even by black Milly, who
baked cookies for him and tarts whenever he cried for his mother.

Cousin Sulie rose nobly to meet the new demands upon her. "It i