s much as any man," said Harcourt, confidently. "You see in me,
despite my youth, a practitioner of the oldest school in the world, a
disciple of Galen's grandfather. Let me go with you to look at the
child."

The little girl lay in a close room. Her curls were tangled on the
pillow and her thin, brown arms tossed on the hot counterpane. By her
side was a glass of some dark medicine, and her black eyes held more
of rebellion than of fever as she gazed at the stranger.

He leaned over her with a smile, smoothing her wrists lightly, with
slow, downward touches, and whispering in her ear. The sound of the
singing below came through the door ajar, and the child listened to
her visitor as if he were telling her a wonderful tale.

"Open the window," he said, after a while, to the mother, pulling the
sheet softly over the child's shoulders, "the air to-night is full of
silver threads which draw away the fever."

Then he threw the black draught out of the window. And the child,
watching him, laughed a little.

"It is the wrong medicine," said he. "Bring me paper and pen."

He wrote by the light of the flickering candle, hiding the words with
his other hand: _Fortune favour Faith_.

Then he slipped the crooked sixpence into the paper, folded it
carefully, tucking the ends one into the other, and marked it with a
cross.

"Hold it tight," he said to the child, closing the fingers of her
right hand upon the little packet. "It will let you into the Garden of
Good Dreams. And now your carriage is ready, and now your horses are
trotting, gently, gently, quickly, softly along the white moon-road to
the Land of Nod. Will you go--are you going--are you gone?"

Her eyelids drooped and fell, and she turned on her right side with a
sigh, thrusting her brown fist under the pillow. Harcourt drew the
mother to the door.

"Hush," he whispered; "leave the window wide. Your Faith holds an
ancient potent charm, thousands of years old, better than all
medicines. Do not speak of it to any one. If you open it, you will
lose it. Let her sleep with it so, and bring it me on the morrow."

In the morning, when the landlord had served breakfast with his own
hands, Harcourt called boldly for the bill; and Barton stared at him,
but the landlord was confused.

"My wife," he stammered--"you must excuse her, gentlemen, nothing will
do but she must speak with you herself about the reckoning. I'll go
call her."

She came with a wonder of gladnes