"Well, we're bound and gagged, and that's a fact. We're not given much
leeway. We are led up to a case and forced to carry out the rules. While
we're doctors we can't be men."

Dick recalled that years later with a bitter sense of its truth!

"All the same, if the profession will have me, I'll have it and thank
God. When I think of--well, of the little cuss I was, and of you--why,
I tell you, I cannot get too soon into harness. I'd like to specialize,
too. I've even gone so far as that."

"Good Lord! In what?"

"Oh, women and children, principally--putting them straight and strong,
you know."

"Umph," grunted Ledyard. "Well, at the first you'll probably be thankful
to get any old case that needs tinkering."

Dick Travers did not see Priscilla again that summer. After a while he
went to the rocks, and once he laid sacrilegious hands on the strange god
with a longing to smash the hideous skull, but in the end he left it and,
after a time, forgot the girl he had played for, even forgot the
fantastic dance, for his thoughts were of sterner stuff.

There were guests at the Hill Place, too, for the first time that year,
and some entertainment. There were fishing, and in due season, hunting,
at which Ledyard excelled, and the family returned to the States earlier
than usual, owing to Dick's affairs.

CHAPTER IV

Nathaniel Glenn had said some terrible things in Priscilla's presence the
evening of the day when he drove her before him while Richard Travers
implored her to hold to her ideal. Fortunately, youth spared Priscilla
from a full understanding of her father's words, but she caught the drift
of his thought. She was convinced that he feared greatly for her here on
earth, and had grave doubts as to her soul's ultimate salvation. There
was that within her, so he explained, which, unless curbed and corrected,
would cast her into eternal damnation! Those were Nathaniel's words.

"She looked a very devil as she danced and smirked at that strange
fellow," so had Glenn described the scene; "a man she says she had never
laid eyes on before! A daughter of Satan she seemed, with all the
witchcraft of her sort." To Nathaniel, that which he could not
understand, was wrong.

Theodora spoke not a word. Certain facts from all the evidence stood
forth and alarmed her as deeply--though not as bitterly--as they did her
husband. There certainly was a daring and brazenness in a young girl
carrying on so before a total