up in the linen closet
with the old man. What arguments and persuasions she brought to bear are
not known. Occasionally his voice could be heard in loud and angry
dissent, but when at last they emerged he looked like some old king of
the jungle that has been captured and tamed. His shoulders drooped, his
one arm hung limply by his side, and his usually restless eyes were bent
upon the floor.

Without a word he strode back to the room where Sally in her misfit
clothes was waiting for him.

"Come along o' me, Sal," he commanded sternly as he picked up his carpet
sack. "Leave your things whar they be."

Silently they passed out of the ward, down the stairway, through the
long vaultlike corridor to the superintendent's room. Once there he
flung back his rusty coat and ripped the last bill but one from its
hiding place.

"That thar is fer my gal," he said defiantly to the superintendent.
"She'll git one the fust day of every month. Give her the larnin' she's
so hell-bent on, stuff her plumb full on it. An' ef you let ennything
happen to her"--his brows lowered threateningly--"I'll come back an'
blow yer whole blame' horspittle into eternity!"

"Pop!" Sally pleaded, "Pop!"

But his emotions were at high tide and he did not heed her. Pushing her
roughly aside, he strode back to the entrance hall, and was about to
pick up his carpet sack when his gaze was suddenly arrested by the great
marble figure that bends its thorn-crowned head in pity over the unhappy
and the pain-racked mortals that pass beneath its outstretched hands.

"You ain't goin' to leave me like this, Pop?" begged Sally. "Ef you take
it so hard, I'll go back, an' I'll go willin'. Jus' say the word, Pop,
an' I'll go!"

The old mountaineer's one hand closed on the girl's bony arm in a tight
clasp, his shoulders heaved, and his massive features worked, but his
gaze never left the calm, pitying face of the Saviour overhead. He had
followed his child without a tremor into the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, but at the entrance of this new life, where he must let her go
alone, his courage failed and his spirit faltered. His dominant will,
hitherto the only law he knew, was in mortal combat with a new and
unknown force that for the first time had entered his life.

For several minutes he stood thus, his conflicting passions swaying him,
as opposing gales shake a giant forest tree. Then he resolutely loosened
his grip on the girl's arm and taking up his burden,