ent-up excitement,
Rose began. Simply and painstakingly she recounted everything which she
had observed about the baby's strange behavior from that painful night
when she had brought her from Judd's lonely cabin, through the long days
in which she had steadily weakened and failed, to the time when the
invisible hand of Death seemed to have begun to pluck at the thread of
life itself.

Donald listened intently, without a word of interruption, until she
suddenly broke off her recital with the words, "Oh, I can't think of
anything more, truly I can't; and I'm so afraid ... afraid that it
hasn't been enough to help."

Miss Merriman's encircling arm closed comfortingly about the girl, and
she patted the head which turned and burrowed into her shoulder, but she
said nothing, waiting for the man to speak. He mused for a moment, and
then his words came with the crisp incisiveness of a lawyer in
cross-examination.

"As she lost control of her legs and began to waver and stumble when she
tried to walk, did she seem to turn, or fall, to one side more than to
the other? Think!"

The anxiety deepened in Smiles' eyes; but she answered without
hesitation, "No, I don't think so. It was more as though her little body
was plumb tuckered out."

"And her hearing? Did that fail?"

"No, not until just toward the last, anyway. Even when she couldn't seem
to answer me, somehow I was quite sure that she understood, when I
spoke, or sang, to her. She would kinder smile, but, oh, it was such a
pitiful smile that it 'most broke my heart."

"She seemed to understand, eh?" He paused, and the room was very still,
except for Big Jerry's stentorian breathing. "Can you say quite
certainly--don't be afraid to answer just exactly what you think--can
you say, then, that, aside from the general weakness of all the powers
of her little body and mind, the headache and occasional sickness, the
most noticeable thing in all her strange behavior was that she wasn't
able to talk clearly, and this increased until she wholly lost the power
of speech which happened before she became as ... as I see her now?"

"Yes, doctor."

Donald turned abruptly to the nurse. "Barring the use of technical
phraseology, and a possible expression of his own, probably valueless,
conclusions, could any doctor, such as is likely to be practising in
Fayville, have given me any more information, or told it better?"

"No, doctor."

At these unexpected words of praise the girl