know what the trouble air, but _I_ does."

The doctor was startled and looked as though he thought that he was
about to have another patient on his hands.

"Hit air a brain tumor thet she hes got, I knows it, an' I knows one of
the few doctor men in this hyar country what kin cure hit. He air
_ergoin'_ ter cure hit fer me, an' leetle Lou haint _ergoin'_ ter die."

Uncertain what to make of this outburst, the doctor departed rather
hastily. Smiles caught up her shawl and ran immediately to Judd's
lonely, cheerless abode, which she entered without a thought of
knocking. She found the man sitting dejectedly before a feeble fire.

He sprang up, voiceless terror apparent in the look which he turned upon
her white face, but, without pausing for any preliminaries, Rose said,
"The doctor, he's been ter see our little Lou again, Judd. He allows
thet he can't do anything more for her, and thet she has got ter die."

The man--whose whole world was now centred in the child to whom he had,
for a year, been father and mother as well as brother--sank down on his
chair and buried his face in his hands.

"I knowed hit," he muttered in a dead voice.

"Hit haint so," cried the girl, who had by this time wholly relapsed
into the mountain speech, as she frequently did still, when laboring
under the stress of emotion. "Hit haint so, Judd. We kin save her. We
hev _got_ ter save her."

"Thar haint no way." The words were tuned to despair.

"Thar _air_ a way. Thar's one man who kin save Lou's life fer ye, an' we
must get him ter do hit.".

She had mentioned no name, but Judd sprang swiftly erect, fists clenched
and shaking above his head. "Do yo' think thet I'd be beholden ter
_thet_ man, after what I done ter him? Do yo' think thet I'd accept
even my sister's life et his hands? I hates him like I does the devil
what, I reckon, air ergoin' ter git my soul!"

"Judd!" cried the girl, "yo' don't know what yo'r ersayin'. Hit's
blasphemy. Ef Doctor Mac kin save Lou's life--an' he _kin_--yo'd be a
murderer,--yes, a murderer uv yo'r own flesh an' blood, ter forbid him."

Spent by the force of his previous passionate outburst, the man sank
tremblingly back into the chair again.

"I kaint do hit, Smiles," he answered piteously. "I kaint do hit, an'
hit's a foolish thought anyway. He wouldn't come hyar. Hit takes money
fer ter git city doctors, an' I haint got none."

"He will come ef I asks him, an' I hev money, Judd," she said with a
pl