bandage once more.

"Why don't you take 'em all off, doc? I'd like to see the old girl again.
Has she gone back to Happy Valley?"

"No--she's here."

"Won't she come to see me?"

"Yes, she'll come, but she can't now--she's sick abed." The man grinned.

"Yes, I know them spells."

"Jim," said the surgeon suddenly, "I'm going to be very busy to-morrow,
and if you've got any message to send to anybody or anything to say to me,
you'd better say it before I go." He spoke carelessly, but with a little
too much care.

The sheet moved over the hands clasped across Jim's breast. "Why, doc,
you don't mean to say--" He stopped and drew in one breath slowly.

"Oh, no, but you can't always tell, and I might not get back till late,
and I thought you might have something to tell me about--" He paused
helplessly, and the man on the cot began moving his lips. The surgeon
bent low.

"Why, doc," he said very slowly, "you--don't--really--mean--to--say--that
the old--" his voice dropped to a whisper, "has finished me this time?"

"Who finished you, Jim--who'd you say finished you?"

A curious smile flitted over the coarse lips and passed. Then the lips
tightened and the thought behind the bandage made its way to the surgeon's
quick brain, and there was a long silence.

At last:

"Doc, d'you ever hear tell of a woman bein' hung?"

"Yes, Jim."

And then:

"Doc, am I goin' shore?" This question the surgeon answered with another,
bending low.

"Jim, what message shall I give your wife?" The curious smile came back.

"Doc, this is Christmas, ain't it?"

"Yes, Jim."

"Doc, you're shore, air ye, that nobody knows who done it?"

"Nobody but you, Jim."

The man had been among men the terror of the hills for years, but
on the last words that passed his gray lips his soul must have swung
upward toward the soul of the Man who lived and died for the peace
of those hills.

"Doc," he said thickly, "you jus' tell the old girl Jim says:
'Happy Christmas!'"

The surgeon started back at the grim cheer of that message, but he took
it like a priest and carried it back through the little hell that flared
down the ravine on Jim now through the window. And like a priest he told
it to but one living soul.

THE ANGEL FROM VIPER

He had violet eyes, the smile of a seraph, and a halo of yellow hair,
and he came from Viper, which is a creek many, many hills away from
Happy Valley. He came on foot and alone to St. Hilda, who s