ore.

Smiles undressed her new charge, who struck uncertain terror to her
heart by drowsily talking on and on, in snatches of unrelated sentences
running the gamut of her limited experiences and with the childish words
often failing, half formed. She put the baby in her own bed, and, after
the belated supper had been eaten and cleared away, and the old man made
as comfortable as possible for the night, Smiles lay down beside the
baby, whose silence and more regular breathing indicated that she was at
last asleep.

The morrow's sun was well above the valley horizon before Judd returned
with the country doctor, and again the former refused to enter the
cabin. While the physician remained, he paced back and forth, back and
forth, with weary, nervous strides; but even in his stress of mind he
unconsciously kept out of view from the window in Big Jerry's room.

At last Rose and Dr. Johnston reappeared, and, breathing hard, Judd
hastened to join them.

"It's brain fever, the doctor says, Judd," said Smiles at once. "He's
left some medicine for me to give her, and you know that I'll nurse her
for you like she was my own baby."

"Air hit ... air hit _bad_, doctor?" asked the mountaineer, with a catch
in his voice.

"Well, of course it ain't an ... er ... exactly easy thing to cure, but
I reckon she'll get well of it. By the way, Amos, how long has she been
a-goin' on like that?"

"I kaint rightly say, doctor. She hes acted kind er strange-like fer
quite er spell, now thet I comes ter think on hit; but I didn't pay no
pertickler attention to hit ontil er day er two back," answered the man
contritely.

"Hmmm," said the doctor. "Oh, I guess we can pull her through all right,
and I will get up here as often as I can. Well, I reckon I'll be
stepping along back."

* * * * *

But little Lou did not fulfil the country practitioner's optimistic
prophecy. The change in her condition, as day after day crept by,
growing longer and colder, was almost imperceptible; but it was steadily
for the worse. The mountain winter closed in with unusual rigors, and
Smiles' cabin continued to be a hospital where she passed her hours
ministering equally to the keen-minded, but bodily tortured old
man--whose heart pained constantly and with growing severity, and whose
breathing became daily more labored--and the child whose mind steadily
became more clouded and her physical functions more weak.

Like a gaunt,