enemy--there couldn't
be more than one?"

Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her
paleness, and the strange light in her eyes, gave him a sense of
anxiety. He wondered what trouble was on her.

"Excommunication?" he repeated.

The unintended truth went home. She winced, even as she responded with
that quaint note in her voice which gave humour to her speech. "Yes,
excommunication," she replied; "but why an enemy? Do we not need to
excommunicate our friends sometimes?"

"That is a hard saying," he answered soberly. Tears sprang to her eyes,
but she mastered herself, and brought the crisis abruptly.

"I want you to save a man's life," she said, with her eyes looking
straight into his. "Will you do it?"

His face grew grave and eager. "I want you to save a man's happiness,"
he answered. "Will you do it?"

"That man yonder will die unless your skill saves him," she urged.

"This man here will go away unhappy and alone, unless your heart
befriends him," he replied, coming closer to her.

"At sunrise to-morrow he goes." He tried to take her hand.

"Oh, please, please," she pleaded, with a quick, protesting gesture.
"Sunrise is far off, but the man's fate is near, and you must save him.
You only can do so, for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is
sick, and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the operation
alone. It is too critical and difficult, he says."

"So I have heard," he answered, with a new note in his voice, his
professional instinct roused in spite of himself. "Who is this man? What
interests you in him?"

"To how many unknown people have you given your skill for nothing--your
skill and all your experience to utter strangers, no matter how low or
poor! Is it not so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have given
to so many, but I can help in my own way."

"You want me to see the man at once?"

"If you will."

"What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances."

She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper
and woodsman."

"But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are
made," he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes
again.

"But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded,
unable now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth.

Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not
stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and sham