remaining child--"Doc, we ain't a-goin'
to forget this!"

"Neither am I, Joe, for various reasons," replied Burns, watching Johnny
Caruthers try the Green Imp's spark. He jumped in beside Johnny and
looked back at Joe. "Remember, now, keep things going just as I leave
them, and I shall expect to find Letty nearly as well as ever when I see
her again. I shall be back in five days. Good-bye."

"Yes."

"I'll be around when you get back, with some money."

Burns looked the man in the eye. "Oh, come, Joe, don't say anything you
don't mean."

"I mean it this time, Doe--I sure do. Me and the old woman--we--Letty--"
The fellow choked.

"All right, Joe. I'm as glad as you are Letty's safe. Take care of her.
Take care of your wife. Do a stroke of good, back-breaking work once
in a while. It'll help that tired feeling of yours that's getting to be
dangerously chronic. You've no idea, Joe, what a satisfaction it is, now
and then, to feel that you've accomplished something. Try it. Good-bye."

He waved his hand at the woman in the door, who responded with a flutter
of her dingy apron; which was immediately thereafter applied to
her eyes. Within, by the window, a little pale-faced girl hugged a
remarkable doll with yellow hair and a red silk frock.

"You'd ought to be pretty proud, Letty Tressler," said the woman,
returning to the small convalescent, "to think Doc kissed you when he
left. He's been awful good to you, Doc has, and him with that arm in a
sling a-bothering him all the time. But I didn't think he'd do that."

"Maybe it's 'cause I'm so clean now," speculated the child weakly. "When
he did it he whispered in my ear that he liked clean faces."

"Letty, you ain't goin' to have any kind o' face but a clean face after
this, jest on account o' Doc Burns," vowed her mother emotionally, and
the child, her doll pressed against her face, nodded.

Far down the road Burns was bidding Johnny Caruthers put on more speed.
"We have to make time to-day, Johnny," he explained. "I'm going to get
off on that ten-thirty to-night if I have to break my other arm to do
it. I don't know that I'd be much more helpless than I am now if I
did. Curious, Johnny, how many things there are a man can't do with one
hand."

"I should say you could do more with that left hand of yours than most
folks can with both," declared young Caruthers, honest admiration in his
eye.

Burns laughed--a hearty, care-free laugh. He was in wild spirits, John