reminded himself.

But it was little assistance the old lady needed. At every crossing she
went stumping boldly forward, her cane high in the air and shaken
threateningly, while she looked neither to the right nor the left,
paying no attention to on-coming vehicles, whether these were
street-cars, motors or teams, only warning each and all with a piping
"Ah-ha! ah-ha! ah-ha!"

People smiled at her. They smiled also, and admiringly, at the freshly
uniformed, blond-haired boy scout striding beside her, whose face, by
the fading marks upon it, indicated that lately he had accidentally
bumped into something.

But Johnnie saw no one, so completely were his thoughts taken up. Of
course Father Pat was sick. That was why he had not been back to the
flat. Was there, the boy wondered, anything a scout could do for the
beloved priest? Johnnie thought of all those instructions in the
Handbook which concerned the aiding and saving of others. "Oh, I want t'
help him!" he cried, and in his eagerness forged ahead of the old lady,
whereupon she poked him sharply with the stick.

"Slow! Slow!" she ordered, breathing open-mouthed.

The distance seemed endless. Johnnie began to fear that he might not
reach the Father before he died. "Oh, all that fightin' was bad for
him!" he concluded regretfully. "That's what's the matter! It wore him
out! I wish Mrs. Kukor didn't go for him! But, oh, he mustn't die! He
mustn't! He _mustn't_!"

And yet that was precisely what Father Pat was about to do. When Johnnie
had climbed the steps of a brownstone house and been admitted by a
strange priest; and between long portieres had entered a high, dim room
where there was a wide, white bed, he realized the worst at once. For
even to young eyes that had never before looked upon death, it was plain
that a great, a solemn, and a strangely terrible change had come into
that revered, homely, kindly face. Its smile was not gone--not
altogether; but still showed faintly around the big, tender Irish mouth.
But, ah, the dear, red hair was wet with mortal sweat, and lay in thin,
trailing wisps upon a brow uncommonly white.

Yes, Father Pat had been right; the bridges made for him by the elderly
dentist "who needed the work" were to outlast the necessity for them.
And the big, young, broad-shouldered soldier-priest was going out even
before little, feeble, old Grandpa!

"Father Pat!" whispered the boy.

The green eyes, moving more slowly than was their wont