t."

"Yes, Mother, I have," he answered quietly. "All the different
laryngeal treatments she had tried under the greatest specialists. Her
one hope was to be built up to the point of standing a bloodless
operation with the galvanic shock. I have tried three times in the last
week to release the muscles and start life in the nerves that control
the vocal chords. In the two other cases with which I have succeeded
the response was immediate after the first operation. Now I dare not
risk another tear of the muscles. One reason I didn't tell her is that
I had to count on her losing the fear that she wouldn't gain the
control. You know she thinks they have been only preliminary treatments
and you have heard her laugh as I held her white throat in my hands.
She believes completely in the outcome. God, to think I have failed
her--HER!"

"Yes, Tom, He knows--and Mother understands," his Mother answered
gently.

"And she must be told right away," said the Doctor as he rose and
walked to the window. "It is only fair. Shall I or you tell her?
Choose, Mother, what will be best for her! But can she stand it?"

"Son," said his Mother, as she also rose and stood facing him with the
late afternoon sun falling straight into her face which, lit by the
light without and a fire within, shone with a wonderful radiance. "Son,
don't you know these old Harpeth Hills have looked down in they day on
many a woman open her arms, take a burden to her heart and start on a
long journey up to the Master's everlasting hills? Sometimes it have
been disgrace, or a lifelong loneliness, or her man hunted out into the
night by the law. I have laid still-born children into my sisters'
arms, and I've washed the blood from the wounds in women's murdered
sons, but I ain't never seen no woman deny her Lord yet and I don't
look to see this little sister of my heart refuse her cup. I'll tell
her, for it's my part--but Tom Mayberry, see that you stand to her when
your time comes, as it surely will."

"Don't you know, Mother, that I would lay down my life to do the least
thing for her?" he asked, with the suffering drawing his young face
into stern, hard lines. "But to do the one thing for her I might have
done has been denied me," he added bitterly.

"No, Tom, there's one thing left to you to give her. Sympathy is God's
box of precious ointment and see that you break yours over her heart
this day. Now, I'm a-going down Providence Road to meet her and I know