y to
the fulfilment of their great ambition; they were to have a child of
their very own!

And so, as the train sped in one direction, and the group of women in
another, no one noticed the stooped, gaunt man who dropped from the
rear end of the baggage car, and, creeping down the bank of the ravine,
disappeared into the green tangle of underbrush.

CHAPTER III

HIS FIRST PATIENT

Oh, the dainty, dainty maid to the borders of the brook
Lingered down as lightly as the breeze;
And the shy water-spiders quit their scurrying to look;
And the happy water whispered to the trees.
--C. G. D. ROBERTS.

Dr. Gilbert Allen, gold-medalist of the Toronto School of Medicine, and
just home from a post-graduate course in London and Edinburgh, had his
coat off, his sleeves rolled up, and was busy arranging bottles on the
shelf of his tiny dispensary. He was whistling cheerily. It was young
Dr. Allen's nature to be cheerful even under adverse circumstances, and
this morning all his prospects were bright. For after years of
spending money--and largely another man's money, too--he was at last on
his feet. His college life had been a very happy one, it is true; so,
also, had been the years since his graduation, the first two spent as
house surgeon in a Toronto hospital, the last, and best of all, in the
Old Land. They had given him breadth and experience; but though
Gilbert was willing to concede that experience teaches, he was equally
assured that she does not pay bills. Now he was a free man, and master
of his profession. He used the last phrase modestly; he was ready and
anxious to make the mastery more complete, and at the same time to win
a name for himself and a home and a fortune for Rosalie.

As he stacked the bottles noisily in their places he glanced around the
little room, and wished he might turn a handspring, just to let off
steam and be able to write to Harwood and the other fellows to say his
office was big enough to admit of the feat. He wisely crushed the
desire, for he recognized the fact that he was under surveillance.
Just outside the windows stretched a little lawn, with a star-shaped
flower-bed in the middle. Up and down this green space, following a
leisurely and devious course, journeyed a lawnmower, propelled by a
long-limbed youth. His straw hat hung limply from his head, his coat
flapped limply from his shoulders, and his trousers bulged limply from
his big top-boots.