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merest fraction, it was with obvious embarrassment, and his flashing optics kept sending suspicious glances at the "furriner" as though to discover if he were laughing at them all. In fact, nothing was further from Donald's mind. It had been long since he had partaken of a meal at which grace was said, but the simple, homely words touched a chord of memory and made it vibrate to a note which brought both pain and pleasure.

The host's stentorian "Amen" was the signal for attack, and for a time the business of satisfying the demands of healthy hunger was paramount to all things else. It was no feast of wit and wisdom, but of something, for the time being, more desirable, and the application of the other three gave Donald an opportunity to study covertly the unusual group of which he had so unexpectedly become a part.

Although he was essentially a man of action, his brusqueness of manner was, in part at least, a pose which had become unconscious, and, deep within his heart, in a chamber carefully locked from the gaze of his fellow men, dwelt Romance and Imagination—the spirit gifts of a mother, whose death, five years before, had brought him his first black grief. Had this visioning power been lacking in him he could never have accomplished the modern miracles which he had already wrought many times in constructive and restorative surgery. Now, the spirit of imagery in his soul was stirred by something in the romantic unreality of his surroundings—the rude, yet interesting room which served all family purposes save that of slumber; the mellow radiance from a crude lamp and the ever-changing light of the open fire; the long, wavering shadows within the cabin; and, without, the banshee wailing of the storm wind around the eaves, the occasional crash of thunder, the creaking of limbs and fitful dashes of rain. He found himself leaning back in his chair and mentally attempting to dissect and study not the bodies, but the personalities, of the three who were the representatives of a type, in manners and customs at least, new to him.

In his boyhood, and before the pressing demands of his profession had enslaved him, Donald had been an insatiate reader, and now he endeavored to recall to memory some of the stories which he had read about this strange people, whose dwelling place was within the limits of the busy, progressive East, yet who were surprisingly isolated from it by natural barriers, and still more so by traditions slow to perish. Pure of stock he knew them to be, for their unmixed blood had had its fountain source in the veins of some of America's best and earliest settlers; primitive in their ideals, strong in their simple purposes and passions, the products of, and perhaps even now factors in, blood feuds whose beginnings dated back generations. And, although he laughed at himself for his imaginings as he remembered that the twentieth century was ten years old, he found himself assigning both the men places in his memory picture.

Big Jerry, slow of speech, patriarchal in looks and bearing, powerful in body, became, to his mind's eye, the venerable chieftain of a mountain clan. Judd, with his aquiline face, which was undoubtedly handsome in a dark, brooding way, beneath its uncombed shock of black hair which swept low over his forehead, sinewy with the strength, quickness and muck of the natural grace of a panther, was the typical outlaw of the hills.

CHAPTER III AN INNOCENT SERPENT IN EDEN

Donald turned his appraising gaze upon the child, and here the illusion yielded to another, quite different.

Even her primitive dress, her unbound hair, her crude forms of speech and soft, drawling intonation—such as the throaty, unvarying pronunciation of "the" as though it were "ther," and "a" like "er"—which sounded so deliciously odd to his New England ears, could not erase from his mind the impression that she did not belong in the picture. To be sure he had, during his tramps, already seen many a wild mountain flower so delicately sweet that it seemed out of place amid its stern environment. But Rose affected him differently, although the difference was subtle, indefinable.

In the company of the men he was conscious of the reserve which one of his type instinctively feels when first in the presence of people of another race or class. With her he was already wholly at his ease. Donald finally attributed this to the fact that she was, after all, merely a child—one of a class which is akin the world over, and which he understood better than any other.

As the simple meal progressed, Big Jerry began to ply the visitor with questions, and press him to talk on many subjects connected with the wide world of men; and, as Donald's natural reticence yielded to the naïve interrogations, he answered with a readiness which somewhat surprised even himself. The child ate little; but sat with her elbows on the table, her firmly rounded chin resting on her clasped hands, and drank in his words. Her luminous eyes were fixed on his face, and expressions of wonder and delight chased each other across her own countenance, like wavering light and shade on a placid pool.

Judd, too, remained silent, ill at ease, and his dark, morose eyes ever shifted from the face of the man to that of the girl. Once, while Donald and his host were engaged in an animated discussion, he awkwardly attempted to draw Rose into personal conversation; but he relapsed again into moody silence when he received a frank, though smiling, rebuff. Clearly the meal was not an enjoyable one for him.

All things of human invention come to an end, and at last Big Jerry lifted his towering frame from his chair to indicate that the supper was over. With obvious relief Judd crossed to the door and, opening it, announced that the storm had nearly passed. It was still raining, however.

"Ef yo' air goin' back ter the village, stranger, I'll be pleased ter sot ye on yo'r way," he announced as he drew on his coat, and to Donald's mind the sentence carried an unmistakable double entente.

Nevertheless he answered promptly, "Thanks, I'd be much obliged if you would. Perhaps Mr. Webb can spare me a lantern, too, since these paths are unfamiliar to ..."

"Sho, yo haint a-goin' out er this house ter-night, friend," broke in the old man. "Leastwise, ef yo'r willin' ter put up with sech accommodations as the loft room offers ye. Thar haint no sense of yer takin' er five-mile walk through them drenched bushes, an' gittin' soaked yerself."

"In course yer goin' ter stay," echoed the girl, with childlike delight. "Besides, I wants ter hear lots more erbout the city an' city folks."

"But I have already imposed enough on your hospitality," protested Donald, hesitatingly, since the invitation held a strong appeal for him.

"Yo' haint imposed at all. Set yo'rself down. I shore appreciates yo'r company."

Judd scowled from the doorway, then flung back over his shoulder a short, "Wall, I reckon I'll be startin' home now," and, without further words, he went out, closing the door behind him with unnecessary violence. Donald said nothing, but he was frankly amused; for it was very apparent that the young mountaineer felt that he had a proprietary interest in Rose, and was undisguisedly jealous of the stranger who was held in such high favor.

Rose, however, lost no time thinking of her lover,—if lover she regarded him,—but flew about the final household duties, humming happily, and now and then breaking into unfinished snatches of song like a wild wood bird. Evidently the slight burn no longer troubled her and was already forgotten.

Her work finished, she joined the two men, who were smoking their pipes before the blazing fire, and seated herself crosslegged at her grandfather's feet. Mike got up leisurely from his post beneath his master's chair, stretched forward and back, yawned prodigiously, and then lay down with his shaggy head on the girl's bare legs. As Donald talked, Rose played with the dog, rolling him over and rubbing his underbody until his mouth opened in a grotesque animal imitation of her own wonderful smile, which constantly flashed to her lips like a ray of light, only to vanish as swiftly, and leave its slowly fading afterglow in her deep eyes.

"Dr. Mac," said the child timidly, during a moment of contented silence, her natural use of his intimate nickname, both startling and pleasing Donald, "yo-all allowed thet yo' doctored children mostly. I loves babies more'n anything else in the world, 'ceptin' only grandpap; they're so purty an' sweet an' helpless-like, thet I reckon the Lord loves 'em powerful, an' the' haint nothin' finer then takin' keer of 'em."

Donald nodded with pleasure, and the girl continued, dreamily:

"I allows thet, when God made people an' put the breath o' life inter them, he hadn't quite got outer his mind what he done on an earlier day, an' was jest improvin' on hit; fer hit sorter seems ter me thet big men an' women air like growin' trees, fashioned fer ter stand up agin ther eliments an' storms most times; but babies air like tiny leetle flowers—so weak an' tender thet we hev ter take mighty good keer of 'em. Don't yo' never feel, somehow, like yo' was tendin' a gyarden of purty flowers, an' a-drivin' away the grubs an' bugs what would make 'em wilt an' die?"

"To be sure I do, my child," he answered, wondering if she realized how apt was her simile, since most disease is, indeed, caused by "bugs an' grubs." "And many people, with imaginations like yours, have felt exactly the same. Did you ever read a poem called 'The Reaper'? No, I suppose not," he added, as the girl shook her curls, while a wistful look crept into her eyes.

"It was written by Longfellow, a very famous poet who used to live near my home city of Boston, and no man ever loved little children better than he did. I had to learn the verses years ago when I was a schoolboy, and I remember the first of them still:—

"'There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.'

"For—he has the Reaper say—the Lord has need of the pretty flowers to make his garden in Heaven more bright and fair."

"I never thought er thet," said the girl seriously, "but I reckon hit's so. Grandpap's bearded like the grain, but somehow he 'pears ter me more like er big pine tree, fer grain bends before ther wind, an' he haint never bent ter no storm."

"And I? Am I a tree, too," queried Donald with amusement.

She studied him judiciously and then answered with quiet assurance, "Yo're the oak. Hit don't bend, neither."

"And yourself?"

"Why," she laughed, "I'm jest a rose like my name. A rose jest growrn' inter er bush."

"To be sure you are. Except that roses have thorns."

"I hev thorns, too," she said with conviction, and Donald doubted it—then.

"I should plumb love ter take keer of babies an' make 'em well an' strong like yo' do," she went on pensively.

"Perhaps you may, someday. You'll have babies of your own."

"Yes," was her simple reply, "I shall have babies ter love an' keer for, but I meant thet I wanted ter help all little children."

"A children's nurse, perhaps, like those who work with me," and he went on to tell her graphically of the wonderful things done at the Children's Hospital, upon the staff of which he was.

Rose listened, as enchanted as a child with a fairy story,—and indeed such it was, a modern fairy tale wherein medicine was a magic potion, and the merciful knife a magic wand. Told

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