n thing we all are trying for. Now go along, and
talk this matter over with your wife. By the way, how is the baby?"

"A little droopy still. It's not too easy to bring him out of it, as
long as I can only give him your stuff on the sly, when Mrs. Brenton is
out of the room." Brenton cast a hasty glance at his watch. "It's time
he had it now. I must be going," he said hurriedly, and, an instant
later, he had bolted from the room.

The doctor listened for the closing of the door. Then his face lost a
little of its keenness, and he sighed.

"It must be the very devil and all to have a conscience," he remarked
at the four walls around him. "Thank God for one thing: I'm immune."

Filling himself a fresh pipe, he sat himself down to its enjoyment.
Half way through it, he spoke once more.

"That woman would beat the Devil in a game of poker, if she could get
the immortal souls of men by way of chips."

But the only immortal soul in Katharine's hands just now was the one
inside her baby boy, a flimsy, fragile little chip upon the tides of
time. However, it would not be Katharine's fault, if time were not soon
exchanged for eternity.

Not that Katharine abused the child, though; not that she exactly
neglected it. She chose its clothing and food with a proper degree of
care; she consulted more than one efficient matron of Saint Peter's
congregation, before she accepted the references of the nurse. That
done, she left the child's routine chiefly to the nurse; to the nurse
exclusively she left all the more tender ministrations to the little,
dawning personality. Upon one point, however, she stood firm. When the
child was ailing, it should be brought at once to her for succour. It
should be healed by the power of her mind, not poisoned by the nostrums
of a man like Doctor Keltridge, good as gold, but slavish in his
adherence to the foolish old traditions.

Therefore it came about that, when the cruel dog days fell upon the
town, when baby after baby became a victim to their scourge until at
last it was the Brenton baby's turn, then Katharine suddenly discovered
that mind was a poor weapon against incipient dysentery. She fought the
disease most valiantly; she even stayed at home for two entire days,
holding the baby in one arm, a fat black volume in the other hand,
reading and pondering by turns. Being human and feminine and, by this
time, a little tired, it is not to be wondered at that occasionally her
mind wandered a li