began to climb, driving his muscular body forcibly
through the underbrush.

The decision and the action were both characteristic of Donald
MacDonald, in whose Yankee veins ran the blood of a dour and purposeful
Scottish clan. Aggressive determination showed in every lineament of his
face, of which his nearest friend, Philip Bentley, had once said, "The
Great Sculptor started to carve a masterpiece, choosing granite rather
than marble as his medium, and was content to leave it rough hewn."
Every feature was strong and rugged, which gave his countenance an
expression masterful to the point of being almost surly when it was in
repose; but it was a face which caused most men--and women over
thirty--to turn for a second glance.

To-day, the effect of strength was further enhanced by a week's growth
of blue-black beard. But his eyes, agate gray and flecked with the green
of the "moss" variety, were the real touchstones of his character, and
they belied the stern lines of his mouth and chin and spoke eloquently
of a warm, kindly heart within the powerful body, a body which, to the
city dweller, suggested the fullback on a football team. Indeed, such he
had been in those days when great power counted more heavily than speed
and agility. Not but that he possessed these attributes as well, in a
degree unusual in one who tipped the scales at one hundred and ninety.

To some it seemed an inexplicable anomaly that a man of his type should
have selected, as the work to which he had dedicated his life, the
profession of medicine, and still more strange that he had become a
specialist in the diseases of children. Yet such was the case, and many
a mother, whose heartstrings were plucked by the lean fingers of
Despair, had cause to bless the almost uncanny surgical skill which his
highly-trained brain exercised through the medium of his big, spatulate,
gentle fingers.

As "Mac" had, in the old days, smashed his way through the opposing line
of blue-jerseyed giants on the football field, and as he now plowed
through the laurel and rhododendron, so had he won his way to the
forefront of the younger generation of his profession until, at the age
of thirty-five, he had become recognized as one of the most able
children's specialists in America. A "man's man," blunt of speech to the
point of often offending at first the cultured women with whom his
labors brought him into contact, he was worshipped in hundreds of homes
as an angel of mer