ht--the biggest fight of
his life. On its issue was to depend the success or failure of the coming
test. Burns's warm heart would have led him to speak sympathetically and
encouragingly of the issue to be met; his understanding of the crisis it
precipitated kept him mute. Whatever help he was now to give his friend
must be given, not through speech but through silence, and by that
subtler means of communication between spirit and spirit which cannot be
analyzed or understood, but which may be more real than anything in life.

They went downstairs, presently, and rejoined the party. Miss Ruston and
Miss Mathewson, Mr. James Macauley and his son Tom, with Bobby Burns,
were engaged in a spirited game of "puss in a corner," for the benefit of
Patsy Kelly, who lay looking on from his chair with sparkling, excited
eyes. Beside Jamie Ferguson, who could not see, Mrs. Burns sat,
describing to him the game and interpreting the shouts of laughter which
reached his ears as he lay, too flat upon his back to see what was
happening twenty feet away.

Ellen looked up, as her husband approached, and something in his face
made her regard him intently. He smiled at her, his hazel eyes dark as
they often were when something had stirred him deeply, and she guessed
enough of the meaning of this aspect to keep her from looking at Dr.
Leaver until he had been for some time upon the porch.

When she did observe him, he was standing, leaning against a pillar
and looking at the wan little face below her, from a point at which
Jamie could not know of his scrutiny. His back was turned upon the
game upon the grass, though the others were watching it. When it ended
Burns called Charlotte Ruston to the taking of the photographs he
wanted--snapshots of the two little patients carried into the full
sunlight. This being quickly accomplished, he announced his own immediate
departure.

"Will you go back with me in the Imp, or at your leisure with the crowd
in the car?" Burns asked Leaver, in an undertone. "My wife will be glad
to go in either car; she suggested your taking your choice."

"If the Macauleys will not misunderstand, I should prefer to go with
you," Leaver replied.

"They won't. Two medicine-men are supposed always to wish for a chance to
hobnob, and we'll put it on that score. I really want to consult you
about Patsy's case."

"Not going with us? Willing to forsake three fair ladies for one
red-headed fiend, just because you know he's