ning the nurse for whom St. Hilda had sent arrived from the
Bluegrass, and the New Englander started down Little Clover to the
settlement school to consult the doctor and see St. Hilda. It was a
brilliant, drenched June day, and never, he believed, had his eyes
rested on such a glory of green and gold. Already he had been heralded
in the swift way common in the hills, and all who saw him coming knew
who he was. He was Juno's man, and the people straightway called him--Jim.
When he stood on St. Hilda's porch her words and her drawn, anxious face
went straight to his heart. There was nobody like Juno, and without Juno
she did not know how she could get along. Her own little sufferers were
in tents about her, and there was only one nurse for them. Juno, said the
doctor, might be unconscious for a long time, and her nurse must be with
her night and day: so who would take Juno's place throughout the hills
she did not know. At once the New Englander, who knew a good deal about
medicine and something of typhoid, found himself offering to do all he
could. Then and there the Mission teacher gave him a list of patients,
and then and there, with a thermometer in his pocket and a medicine-case
in his hand, he started on his first round. The people were very shy with
him at first. In a few days he was promoted to Doctor Jim, and soon he
was plain "Doc" to all. By every mouth that opened he found Juno's name
blessed, and many were the tales of what she had done. She had saved wild
Jay Dawn's little girl and Lum Chapman's firstborn. She had brought old
Aunt Sis Stidham back from the shadow of the grave, and had turned that
tart, irreverent old person's erring feet back into the way of the Lord.

[Illustration]

Night and day, and through wind and storm, she had travelled the hills,
healing the sick and laying out and helping to bury the dead. Apparently
there was not a man, woman, or child in Happy Valley who did not love her
or have some reason to be grateful, and when in the open-air meeting-house
Parson Small told of her work and prayed that her life be spared, there
were fervent "Amens," or tears and sobs, from all. Doctor Jim soon found
himself getting deeply interested in the people, and when he contrasted
the lives of those whom the influence of the Mission school had not yet
reached with the folks in Happy Valley he began to realize the amazing
good that St. Hilda was doing in the hills. What a place he was earning
for himself