he note of yielding. "Sure an' you'd go out, doctor
dear, without thinkin', to save your dog if he was drownin'. I've got
me buggy down there; I'll take you safe. And you shan't regret it; I'll
make it worth your while, by the Lord Harry I will!"

"Pshaw!"--Mahony opened the door of the surgery and struck a match. It
was a rough grizzled fellow--a "cocky," on his own showing--who
presented himself in the lamplight. His wife had fallen ill that
afternoon. At first everything seemed to be going well; then she was
seized with fits, had one fit after another, and all but bit her tongue
in two. There was nobody with her but a young girl he had fetched from
a mile away. He had meant, when her time came, to bring her to the
District Hospital. But they had been taken unawares. While he waited he
sat with his elbows on his knees, his face between his clenched fists.

In dressing, Mahony reassured Polly, and instructed her what to say to
people who came inquiring after him; it was unlikely he would be back
before afternoon. Most of the patients could wait till then. The one
exception, a case of typhoid in its second week, a young Scotch
surgeon, Brace, whom he had obliged in a similar emergency, would no
doubt see for him--she should send Ellen down with a note. And having
poured Doyle out a nobbler and put a flask in his own pocket, Mahony
reopened the front door to the howl of the wind.

The lantern his guide carried shed only a tiny circlet of light on the
blackness; and the two men picked their steps gingerly along the
flooded road. The rain ran in jets off the brim of Mahony's hat, and
down the back of his neck.

Having climbed into the buggy they advanced at a funeral pace, leaving
it to the sagacity of the horse to keep the track. At the creek, sure
enough, the water was out, the bridge gone. To reach the next bridge,
five miles off, a crazy cross-country drive would have been necessary;
and Mahony was for giving up the job. But Doyle would not acknowledge
defeat. He unharnessed the horse, set Mahony on its back, and himself
holding to its tail, forced the beast, by dint of kicking and lashing,
into the water; and not only got them safely across, but up the steep
sticky clay of the opposite bank. It was six o'clock and a cloudless
morning when, numb with cold, his clothing clinging to him like wet
seaweed, Mahony entered the wooden hut where the real work he had come
out to do began.

Later in the day, clad in an odd