The cabin of the nearest neighbor--Pete Andrews--was only a few rods distant; but, before the girl reached it in the face of the momentarily increasing storm, she was panting, and her face, hair and clothing were plastered with clinging flakes.

"Mis' Andrews, I hates ter ask er favor of ye such er powerful mean night; but I needs help," said Smiles, as soon as the door had been opened, letting her in, together with a whirl of snow which spread itself like a ghost on the rough floor.

"Yo' knows thet I'd do enything in ther world fer ye, Rose gal. I reckon I owes ye my life since when ... when Gawd Almighty tuck my baby back ter thet garden er His'n in Paradise," answered the frail, weary-looking woman, whose eyes quickly suffused with tears.

"Hit haint repayment I'm askin' of ye, but er favor, Mis' Andrews. I wants ye ter help me save ther life of another mountin flower, what's nigh faded plum erway."

"Lou Amos?" asked the woman. She had already turned to get her own shawl.

"Yes, hit's leetle Lou. She air powerful sick, an' I wants fer ye ter stay ter-night with her an' grandpap, ef yo' will. Thar haint nothing ter do but stay with them."

"In course I'll do hit fer ye, Smiles," was the ready answer, and her lank, slouching husband nodded a silent a.s.sent, as she turned to him.

"But what air yo' reckonin' ter do? Yo' kaint go nowhar in this hyar storm. I don't recollect hits like on the mountain, no time."

The girl did not answer; but held the door open while the other stepped out, only to catch her breath and flatten herself against the cabin's wall as a sheet of mingled sleet and snow struck her. By continually a.s.sisting one another, the two made their way slowly over to Jerry's home; and, when they paused within its shelter, Rose held her companion's arm a moment, and said, "Thar haint no use tryin' ter prevent me, Mis' Andrews, cause I'm ergoin' ter do hit. I'm ergoin' down ter Fayville, an' send a telegram message fer er city doctor thet I knows, ter come hyar an' make Lou well. Don't go fer ter tell grandpap whar I've gone er he'll worry erbout me, an' thar haint no cause ter. The storm's et my back, an' hits all down hill goin'. I hates ter tell a lie ter him, but I allows I've got ter, this one time."

In sudden terror over the mad plan, the older woman began to protest; but Rose shook off her detaining hand, and put an end to the sentence by leading the way hastily into the cabin.

"Thar's a leetle child what needs my help, an' I've got ter take keer of her fer er while, grandpap," Smiles said at once. "Mis' Andrews hes come over fer ter stay with ye and Lou, now haint thet kind uv her? I'll git back es soon es ever I kin, but don't yo' fret ef hit haint erfore yo' goes ter bed ... or even till mornin' time."

She furtively obtained a few bills from her precious store, kissed the old man's haggard, wrinkled cheek, and the white forehead of the baby who lay on the bed, almost inert save for the restless moving of her head from side to side, and the low moans which came with almost every breath, and hurried out into the storm.

In later years Rose could be induced to speak only with the greatest reluctance of that journey down the snow-swept mountain path--for the blizzard was as fierce as it was rare--and even the recollection of it brought a look of terror into her eyes.

There was flying horror abroad that night, and the demented trees quivered and tossed their great arms so wildly that they cracked and broke, to fall crashing in the path. Yet, accomplish the five mile long, perilous descent, in the midst of lashing sleet and snow, over a slippery, tortuous path, she did. With her clothing torn by flaying branches and clutching wind, and drenched by icy water as the snow melted; with her hands and lips blue, and her feet numb; with her wavy hair pulled loose from its braids and plastered wetly against her colorless cheeks; she eventually stumbled into the rude building which contained the railroad and telegraph office at the terminus of the branch line at Fayville. Then she fell, half unconscious, into the arms of the astonished agent, who came to the door when he heard her stumble weakly against it.

"Good G.o.d, child, where did you come from?" he cried.

Smiles' lips moved faintly, and he caught an echo of the words which she had been repeating mechanically, over and over, "She haint ergoin' ter die!"

"I reckon she ain't, if human will can save her ... whoever she is," muttered the man, as he laid the exhausted girl on a rude waiting bench, poured between her bruised lips a few drops of smuggled whiskey from a pocket flask, and then unceremoniously cut her shoe lacings and removed her sodden, icy boots.

After a moment, she sat weakly up, and--punctuated by gasps drawn by exquisite pain--managed to pant out, "I've got to send a telegram ... to-night ... now. Oh, please, Mister, don't wait for anything."

"There, there. We'll take care of your message all right. Don't worry, little woman," he answered, rea.s.suringly. "But I ain't a-goin' ter send a tick till you're thawed out. My missus lives upstairs, an' she'll fix you up."

He half-carried, half-helped the weary girl up the narrow stairs, and, having surrendered her into the charge of a kindly and solicitous woman, hastened to rekindle the wood fire in the stove. As its iron top began to regain the ruddy glow which had scarcely faded from it, Rose crept near, holding out her bent, stiffened hands.

"Now, take it easy, little girl," cautioned the agent. "Not too close at first."

"And take off your dress and stockings, dear," said his wife. "Don't give no thought to him,--we've got three daughters of our own, most growed up."

The agent departed, with a heavy clamping of feet on the stairs, and gratefully--but with hands which were so numb that she had to give up in favor of the woman--Rose obeyed; and soon her teeth stopped their chattering, and the red blood of youth began once more to course through her veins, while her drenched, simple undergarments sent up vaporous white flags which indicated that the watery legions of the storm king were fast surrendering to their ancient enemy--Fire.

The older woman wrapped a blanket about the girl, as her husband came upstairs again with a pad of telegram blanks, and said, "Now, I'll write out the message you've got to send for you, if you want me to."

"Thank you, sir. I'm obliged to you and your missus. I reckon you can put the words better than I can, for I haint ... I have never sent one before. It's for Dr. Donald MacDonald, who lives on Commonwealth Avenue, up north in Boston city. And I want to tell him that little Lou Amos is most dying from a brain tumor. And tell him that she is nearly blind and 'comatose'...."

"That word's a new one to me, how do you spell it?" interrupted the agent, with pencil plowing through his rumpled hair.

"I ... I guess I've forgotten. Spell it like it sounds, and he'll know. And tell him that I will pay him all the money I've got, if he'll only come quick."

"How shall I sign it? It has to have your name, you know."

"Say it's from his foster-sister, Rose."

Laboriously the man wrote out the message, and the floor was littered with discarded attempts before he was satisfied; but in time the distant, slow clicking of the telegraph key below was sending not only the child's eager appeal to its destination many hundred miles north, but a message of renewed hope into the heart of Smiles.

"It will cost you more'n a dollar," said the man, as he appeared again. "But if you haven't got that much, why ..."

"I've got it right here," responded the girl, turning on him for an instant a glowing smile of grat.i.tude for his halting offer. "I'm truly more'n obliged to you, sir ... and your wife. I reckon G.o.d meant that you should be here to-night to help save the life of a dear little child," she added simply.

"Now I'll just put on my things and be startin' back home."

"Startin' home? Well, I reckon not. You're a-goin' to stay right here to-night, and let my woman put you straight to bed. That's what you're a-goin' to do."

Smiles' protests were all in vain, and soon the weary body and mind were relaxed in the sleep which follows hard on the heels of exhaustion.

It was close on to midnight when Dr. Donald MacDonald reached his apartment after a rare theatre party with his fiancee. His day's work had been exacting, and he was doubly tired. The thought of bed held an almost irresistible appeal.

As he inserted his latch key in the lock, he heard the telephone bell in his office ringing insistently; his heart sank, and cried a rebellious answer.

Combined force of habit and the call of duty caused him to hasten to the instrument, however, without stopping to remove hat or coat, and to his ear came a small, distant voice saying, "A telegram for Dr. Donald MacDonald. Is he ready to receive it?"

"Yes ... Hold on a minute until I get a pencil.... All right, go ahead."

"It is dated from Fayville, Virginia, January 1, 1914. 8:30 P.M. Are you getting it?"

"Yes, yes. Go on," cried the man, with increasing heart pulsations.

"'Dr. Donald MacDonald, Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Ma.s.s. Lou Amos dying of brain tumor almost blind and 'k-o-m-o-t-o-s-e'"--she spelt it out--"'Come at once if possible I will pay.' It is signed, 'Your foster-sister Rose.' Did you get it? Yes? Wait a moment, please, there is another one dated and addressed the same. The message reads, 'Girl came alone down mountain in howling blizzard. Case urgent. Signed, Thomas Timmins, Station Agent.' That is all."

"Thank you. Good-night," said Donald mechanically, as he replaced the receiver.

Through the partly open folding door he could dimly see that enticing bed, with his pajamas and bath robe laid across it. It seemed to him as though it were calling to his weary body with a siren's voice, or had suddenly acquired the properties of the cup of Tantalus. He hesitated, and moved a step toward it. Then the vision of Rose as he had last seen her, with the ethereal smile trembling on lips that struggled bravely to laugh, and in deep misty eyes, came between it and him.

Still clad in hat and overcoat, he seated himself at the desk and called up first the information bureau of the South Terminal Station, then his young a.s.sociate, Dr. Philip Bentley, in whose charge he was accustomed to leave his regular patients when called away from the city for any length of time; and finally a house used as a semi-club by trained nurses.

When his last call was answered he asked, "Is Miss Merriman registered with you now? This is Dr. MacDonald speaking."

After a wait of several minutes, during which he felt himself nod repeatedly, a sleepy voice spoke over the wire, "This is Miss Merriman, Dr. MacDonald. I'm just off a case."

"Good. I'm lucky ... that is if you're game to take another one immediately."

"Yes, doctor. Do you want me to-night?"

"No, to-morrow ... this morning, that is, will do. I shall want you to meet me at the South Station, New York train, at seven o'clock."

"Yes, doctor. What sort of a case is it?"

"Same as the last you a.s.sisted me in--brain tumor. But we're going further this trip ... the jumping-off place in Virginia. It's up in the mountains, so take plenty of warm clothes."

"Very well, doctor." Then there came a little laugh, for these two were excellent friends now, and the query, "Another record-breaking fee?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow," he replied. "Don't forget, seven o'clock train for New York. Good-night."

"Good-night, doctor."

Donald turned away from the desk, and for a moment stood motionless.

"G.o.d bless her brave, trusting, little heart," he said half aloud.

And he was not thinking of Miss Merriman.

CHAPTER XX.

THE ANSWER.

More than once Rose caught herself wondering if, after that day was done, she would ever be able to smile again. In obedience to the doctor's prescription for Big Jerry, which it was ever her first duty to fill, she never looked towards him--as he sat bent over before the fire, eyes heavy with pain, breath coming in deep rasps, but lips set firmly against a word of complaint--without sending him a message of love and compa.s.sion through the intangible medium of that smile. Yet, as the weary hours dragged on with plodding feet, it seemed to her as though each new one was not an interest payment on a fund of happiness stored within her heart, but a heavy dipping into the princ.i.p.al itself.

Before she had taken her early morning departure back up to the mountain over the sodden, slippery path, she had received a telegram that Donald had sent off as his last act before yielding to the lure of bed, and which brought her the hope-engendering word that he would be with her as soon as swift-speeding trains could bring him.

But that was yesterday. By no possibility could he reach them before the coming evening, and surely never had the sun taken so long to make his wintry journey across the pale blue sky.

Hour after hour Rose sat by the bedside of little Lou, and tenderly stroked her cold small hands while she hummed unanswered lullabies, each note of which was the chant of a wordless prayer. The sufferer lay so white, so utterly still, save for the periods when her every breath was a faint moan or she suddenly shook and twisted in a convulsive spasm, that time and again the girl started up with a cry of terror frozen on her lips but echoing in her heart, and bent fearfully over to press her ear close against the baby's thin breast. As often it caught the barely discernible beat of the little heart within.

The baby's eyes, now piteously crossed, had turned upward until the starlike pupils were almost out of sight. There were long periods when only the occasional twitching of the bloodless, childishly curved and parted lips, or the uneasy moving of the golden crowned head on the pillow, betrayed the fact that the spark of life still glowed faintly. Could she, by the power of will and prayer, keep that spark alight until the one on whom she pinned her faith should arrive, and fan it back to a flame by his miraculous skill? That was Smiles' one thought.

The violet shadows of evening began at last to tinge the virgin whiteness of the out-of-doors, and Rose caught herself starting eagerly, with quickened pulse, at every new forest sound. The crunching tread of Judd, who paced incessantly outside the window, grew almost unbearable. She counted the steps as they died away, and listened for them to return, until her nerves shrieked in protest, and it was only by an effort that she curbed their clamoring demand that she rush to the door and scream at him; bid him stand still or begone.

Through the shadows Donald was once again making his way up the now familiar mountain side. To have climbed up the footpath with Miss Merriman and their essential baggage would have been impossible, and he had, after much persuasion, finally succeeded in hiring a man in Fayville to drive them up in a springless, rickety wagon. This had necessitated their taking a much more circuitous route, and what seemed like an interminably long time.

During the railway journey from the Hub, he had told his companion all of the relevant facts, and much of the story of Rose, and the nurse's sympathetic interest in the recital had made her almost as anxious as the man himself to arrive at their destination and answer the girl's cry for aid.

Once she had voiced a doubt as to the wisdom of leaving his urgent practice and taking such a trip on so slender grounds.

"But how do you know that it is brain tumor, doctor, or that there is either any chance of saving the child's life, or any real need of a surgeon? At the most you have only the conclusion of a country doctor who can hardly be competent to determine such a question."

"I have considered all that, Miss Merriman," he had replied, shortly, and then added, as though he felt that an explanation were due, "Frankly, when I made up my mind to go, I wasn't thinking of the patient so much as I was of my foster-sister. Perhaps she won't appeal to you as she has to me; but I really feel a strong responsibility for her future, and I don't want her faith in m ... in physicians to be shattered. You see, I have held up the ideal of service, regardless of reward, as our motto." He sat silently looking out of the car window for a moment, while the nurse studied his serious, purposeful face and mentally revised her previous estimate of him. Then he went on, with an apologetic laugh, "Besides--Oh, I know that it sounds utterly preposterous, but there are times when a man's groundless premonitions are more real to him than any logical conclusions of his own. This is one of those times."

The subject dropped.

Donald had, in addition to a fortnight's compensation in advance, given Miss Merriman a return ticket and sufficient money to cover all necessary disburs.e.m.e.nts, and told her that she must, of course, look to him for any additional salary. Under no circ.u.mstances, he said, was she to accept what Rose was sure to try and press upon her.

At length the plodding horse turned into the little clearing before Jerry's cabin, and, as it appeared, the watcher outside, his face twitching, slunk silently away into the forest, where his racked soul was to endure its hours of Gethsemane.

Rose heard them. She hastened to the door, and her white lips uttered a low cry which spoke the overwhelming measure of her relief.

"I just knew you'd come!" she said, as the man, numbed with cold, swung his companion to the ground. The girl gave her a quick glance of surprise; but her eyes instantly returned to the doctor's face with an expression which Miss Merriman decided was as nearly worship as she had ever seen.

Donald did not return her greeting in words at first; but, after he had paid the driver, so liberally that the latter was left speechless, and they had entered the cabin, he held out his strong arms to her. Smiles swayed into them and pressed her face against the thick fur of his coat with an almost soundless sigh that told the whole story of anxious waiting and the end of the tension that had left its mark on her childlike face.

"This, Miss Merriman, is my little foster-sister, Rose. And Miss Merriman is a nurse who has come to help us," said he, as he released her, and pa.s.sed on to greet the old giant, who had slowly pulled his shattered, towering frame from his chair, and now stood with a gaunt hand held out in welcome, while a ghost of his one-time hearty smile shadowed his lips. Big Jerry's flowing beard was now snow-white, and Donald was shocked at the change which had taken place in him.

Their greeting was brief and simple, as between men whose hearts are charged, and, as soon as he had eased him back into his seat, Donald spoke with a quick a.s.sumption of his professional bearing.

"Now, about our little patient. How is she, Rose?"

"Close to the eternal gates, I'm afraid," whispered the girl, with a catch in her voice. "Oh, Donald, we cannot let her ..." she turned abruptly and led the way to the door of her tiny bedroom. The doctor stepped inside and looked briefly, but searchingly, at the child who lay there, silent, and the semblance of Death itself. With her lips caught by her teeth, and her hands clasped tightly together to still her trembling, Rose watched him.

His next words, spoken as he stepped back into the cabin and shook himself free of his greatcoat, were brusquely non-committal. "And the doctor? Where is he?"

"The doctor? Why, he ... he isn't here; he hasn't been here for days. He doesn't even know that you were coming ... that I had sent for you."

"What? But I don't understand, child. Of course he ought to be here." Donald's voice was so sharp that it brought the tears, that were so near the surface, into Smiles' eyes, perceiving which, he hastened to add more gently, "There, there, of course you didn't know; but I can hardly hope to diagnose ... to determine what the trouble really is, or where the growth, if there is one, is located, unless I get a full history of the case from him and his own conclusions to help me."

"But ... but, Donald, he didn't have any conclusions. He said it was ... was brain fever, first, and then he gave up trying and told us that Lou had just got to die. Besides, I know the ... the history...." She stopped, with a little wail of distress.

"'Brain fever!' Then who ... the telegram certainly said 'tumor.'"

"Yes, yes. I said that. Oh, I can't tell you why; but I just know that it is, Donald, for little Lou has been exactly like you told me that baby up north was--the one you saved by a ... a miracle. Oh, don't you remember? It was in the paper."

Her sentences had become piteously incoherent; but their significance slowly dawned upon him. To Miss Merriman the conversation was somewhat of an enigma, and she stood aside, regarding Rose with an expression half bewildered, half frightened. Had this strange child summoned so famous a physician, whose moments, even, were golden, to the heart of the c.u.mberlands on her own initiative and on the strength of her own childish guess, merely? It was incredible, a tragic farce.

Perhaps something of similar import pa.s.sed swiftly through the man's mind, for he placed his large hands upon the girl's slender shoulders, and, for an instant, sent a searching gaze deep into her eyes, now luminous with unshed tears, as he had first seen them. They looked up at him troubled, but frankly trusting.

"Do you mean, Rose," his words came slowly, "that you sent for me without a doctor's suggestion and advice; that you did it on your own hook?"

She nodded. "I just couldn't bear to have her die. She is all that ... that Judd has got in the world, now, and I knew that you could save her for him."

His hands felt the controlled tension of her body, and he impulsively drew her close to him. When he answered, his voice was strangely gentle.

"It's all right, little doctor. I'm glad that you did, and only hope that I can help. Now, let's all sit down here before the fire--how good it feels after that bitter ride, doesn't it, Miss Merriman?--and you will tell me all that you can about the baby's trouble--every single thing that you have noticed from the first, no matter how little it is. You see, that only by knowing exactly how the patient has acted can the surgeon even hope to guess where the trouble has its seat. Once before I told you that a nurse has got to face the truth, understandingly and bravely, and I may as well tell you about some of the difficulties which lie in the path that we must tread to-night. Your faith has been almost--sublime, dear. I wonder if it would have failed if you had known how like a child in knowledge--a child searching in the dark--is a surgeon at such a time as this?"

"I ... I don't believe that I understand, and you kind of frightened me, Don. I thought that all you would have to do would be to ... to cut out that awful thing that is stealing away Lou's precious life. Wasn't that what you did for that other little child?"