nite patience, as
though she were speaking to a child.

"What else did the doctor say?"

Her tranquillity in a measure calmed the man.

"Oh, he said a lot of things; but that's all I remember--what I told
you. It was the last thing, and he kind of tilted back in his chair.
The spring needed oil; it fairly screamed. I can hear it now.

"'Steve Babcock,' said he, 'you've got to go some place where it's
drier, where the air's pure and clean and sweet the year round.
Mexico's the spot for you, or somewhere in the Far West where you can
spend all your time in the open--under the roof of Heaven.'

"He leaned forward, and again that cursed spring interrupted.

"'If you don't go, and go right away,' he said, 'as sure as I'm
talking to you, you're a dead man.'"

Babcock straightened, and, leaden-eyed, looked dully into the blaze.

"Those," he whispered, "were his last words."

"And if you do go?"--very quietly.

"He said I had a chance--a fighting chance." Once more the hopeless,
deprecatory gesture.

"But what's the use? You know, as well as I, that I haven't a hundred
dollars to my name. He might just as well have told me to go to the
moon.

"We poor folks are like rats in a trap when they turn the water
on--helpless. We--"

Babcock had wandered on, forgetting, for the moment, that it was his
own case he was analyzing. Now of a sudden it recurred to him,
cumulatively, crushingly and, as before, his head instinctively sought
refuge.

"We can't do anything but take our medicine, Mollie--just take our
medicine."

_Patter_, _patter_ sounded the sleet against the window-panes,
mingling with the roar of the wind in the chimney, with the short,
quick breaths of the man. In silence he reached out, took one of the
girl's hands captive, and held it against his cheek.

For a minute--five minutes--she did not stir, did not utter a sound;
only the soft oval face tightened until its gentle outlines grew
sharp, and the brown skin almost white.

All at once her lips compressed; she had reached a decision.

"Steve, sit up, please; I can talk to you better so." Pityingly,
protectingly, she placed an arm around him and drew him close; not as
man to maid, but--ah, the pity of it!--as a feeble child to its
mother.

"Listen to what I say. To-day is Thursday. Next Monday you are going
West, as the doctor orders."

"What--what did you say, Mollie?"

"Next Monday you go West."

"You mean, after all, I'm to have a chance?