Marcia Lowe was talking far and beyond Morley; he stared bewildered at her, but something within himself was reaching out and touching, with soul-intensity, the tragic appeal from the little woman opposite.

"Uncle Theodore Starr came here because he loved his kind and felt that you all needed him most. Because you had no choice, he believed you would accept him. Can you remember how he worked among you? served you and died for you?"

"I--do, mum!" An old sense of gratitude gave force to the words.

"Well, I feel as he did, only I want to mend your poor, sick bodies; make you strong enough to want to help yourselves like men and women!

I want you to know that you have _souls_."

But now Martin was lost again. The stare settled on his face and only the hypnotism of the woman across the hearth guided him. Marcia Lowe saw this, and grew desperate.

"Oh! dear, what shall I do?" she cried helplessly. "Can I say anything that will make you understand? The thing I have is safe and sure. It might go wrong with you--only _might_--but I want, I must have, your consent. Just suppose it did go wrong with you, but that you knew it would help hundreds of others--would you be willing to try?"

Morley did not attempt an answer.

"Let me put it another way!" and now the little doctor arose and stood in the full glow of the fire, while the roar of the wind and the flaring of the red light filled the room with sound and colour. The slim, pale woman looked very weak and small to be the leading actor in this tragic drama of the hills, and the big, stupidly staring man opposite seemed very insignificant as a great sacrifice.

"See, I will put it this way. They call me the Cup-o'-Cold-Water Lady because--I give them all a little drink of water and it makes them better! I made the little Hope boy well; ask Liza, she knows. I gave your Sandy a cup of cold water and it helped his throat--I could have helped him more, poor boy, if he had not gone away. Martin Morley, I want to give _you_ a cup of cold water--oh! please trust me! You must do what I ask you to do--just for one little week. It will be hard, but I will watch with you and share every suffering hour. I will nurse you and care for you as a daughter might, and then, at the end, I believe as truly as God hears me, that you win stand straight and take your place--_your_ place--among men!"

"A charm?" Morley panted, for he was quite overcome by the power exerted over him.

Full of zeal and trust, seizing upon anything to gain her end, Marcia Lowe replied:

"Exactly--a charm! See!" and suddenly she turned to the closet beside the chimney-place; taking out a small bottle she held it up to the light with a glow of reverence upon her uplifted face. "Fifteen tiny grains of this!"

Morley was fascinated.

"Fifteen grains," he repeated, like a man talking in his sleep--"fifteen grains!"

"Yes, yes! and then you must have--faith! You know you always _must_ have faith in charms."

Morley assented to this.

"Will--you--will you try?"

"I--reckon I will, mum!"

"Will you promise? Oh! If I have ever done anything to make you grateful, promise! promise!"

"I promise!"

From that night the cure began. Shut away against the mountain-world, favoured by one of the hill storms, prolonged and depressing, the little doctor tested her charm. She was nurse and companion as well as physician. Willing to do battle and take the consequences for the faith that was in her, she wrestled with her problem. Men had proven the thing elsewhere--why not she, here among her dead uncle's people?

"You cannot eat until I tell you to, Martin Morley," she said.

For the first day or so the weakened man, used to deprivation, made no demur; then his haggard face and imploring eyes pleaded for food, and on the third day he asked for it, cried for it like a starving child.

This wrung Marcia Lowe's heart.

"Oh! we women," she whispered to herself scornfully; "I declare I must put a watch upon myself or I will find myself going to the cupboard and betraying the faith of Doctor Marcia Lowe!"

Then she resorted to subterfuge, and playfully bullied poor Morley.

"See! If I do not eat, can you not keep me company? What manners have you, Martin Morley, to eat while a lady starves?"

The wretched fellow tried to smile, but wept instead.

After that, Marcia Lowe rarely left the room; never unless Morley slept. She stole like a thief to her closet and ate her food when, and as she could.

"It's the nurse of Martin Morley who refreshes herself," she thought comfortingly.

It was on the fifth evening of the battle with the deadly foe of the mountain poor-whites, that Marcia Lowe heard a knock upon her cabin door. So alone and absorbed had she been for the past few days that a demand from the outer world startled and annoyed her. Martin was sleeping--he lay in the lean-to chamber--so on tiptoe the little doctor went to answer the summons.

The storm had passed unnoticed by Marcia Lowe, and a bright starry heaven lay behind the tall figure of Tod Greeley on the doorstep.

"Oh! Come in, come in!" whispered Marcia--and oddly enough she felt a glow of relief and welcome. Greeley came in and grimly took a chair by the cheerful fire on the ashless hearth.

"I've come on a mighty unpleasant errand, ma'am," he said; "and I ain't one as can pass around sweets before the bitters."

All the way to Trouble Neck Greeley had arranged this speech, and the medical flavour of it had given him courage.

"You're very kind to come yourself, Mr. Greeley," Marcia Lowe was smiling; "another might not have been so welcome. And now for the bitter! I'll gulp it bravely, for I like sweets better."

She sat down in her own rough little rocker, and swayed calmly to and fro.

"Well, mum, the County Club, in session down to the store, delegated me to call on you. Leastway, I done told them I reckoned no one else _but_ me should come first!"

"Thank you again, Mr. Greeley."

"Since the raid on Teale's----" Tod drawled uncomfortably--"there's them as is scared. I ain't standing up or setting down for them Speak Easies back o' The Hollow, but business is business, and no man knows who's going to get struck so long as----" Greeley glanced cautiously about--"so long as--you're hiding what you _are_ hiding!"

For a moment Marcia Lowe tried to readjust her thoughts and get them into some sort of connection; finally she laughed, laughed so long and so noiselessly that Greeley grew nervous.

"Lord, ma'am!" he faltered, "you can't afford to take it that-er-way lest you've got your place _full_ of 'em!"

"Oh! Mr. Greeley. They think, the club thinks I have something to do with the raid? Why I did not know, until some one told me, that there had been one. Come, I want you to see what I am hiding!"

She motioned her guest to the doorway of the lean-to.

"Look!" she whispered.

For a moment Greeley did not recognize the wan, helpless creature huddled on the bed; so small, so pitiful was the unconscious man that he seemed a stranger. Then in amaze and half terror, Tod breathed:

"Mart Morley! What you--doing--to--him?"

Marcia Lowe's eyes were full of tears, and her trembling lips were hardly able to frame the words:

"I'm helping him to lead his people back to their heritage! Oh! you do not understand; but he and I--with God on our side, are fighting--just plain fighting a--a worm!"

At that moment Morley stirred and opened his hollow, starving eyes.