ff to the wagon now for a sleep if you like. I should not
have suggested your staying all night, only that I thought it would be
good for your brother to have one of his own about him; but as he seems
inclined to sleep now, it will not really matter."

"Oh, I did not mean that I wanted to go to bed!" said Nealie quickly.
"This is not the first time I have stayed up all night. Whenever the
children have been ill I have stayed with them. Indeed I am quite used
to watching and being on guard. But I want to know how soon you think
that it will be fit for me to leave Rupert to the care of Sylvia, so
that I may go to find Father."

"You could not go to a place like Mostyn alone, and the best way will be
for you to send and ask your father to come here for you," replied the
doctor gravely.

But to this suggestion Nealie shook her head. "I heard what you said to
Sylvia about Father, and I have the feeling that he needs us very badly
indeed. Why did he give up the practice here?"

Dr. Plumstead hedged this question as best he could, for he simply could
not tell this girl with the pathetic eyes that an old rumour had risen,
which made it necessary for the doctor to go farther afield, and so the
practice had been disposed of to the first person who was willing to
give a little money for it.

But Nealie was shrewd enough to understand without telling, and, looking
the doctor straight in the face, she asked: "Was it that affair of
Father taking off the man's arm which was brought up against him?"

"Something of the kind, I think," said the doctor reluctantly. He was
saying to himself how hard it was that this young girl should have so
many hard things to bear when she seemed just made for joy and
happiness, when, to his amazement, she broke into a low ripple of happy
laughter, and softly clapped her hands.

"I thought it was that," she cried. "Strangely enough, since we landed
in New South Wales I have stumbled upon the very man whose arm it was
that Father took off, and someone told me that this man says it was the
greatest blessing of his life that he was thrust out into the world
maimed, to make his own way, and sink or swim as best he could. Now,
when I have found my father I am going to ask him to communicate with
this man, and to make the man set him right before the world; for why
should my dear father have to suffer so heavily for having merely done
his duty, and saved the man's life in spite of everything? It is a
d