CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS1922.H41911 
 
 The healer, 
 
 3 1924 007 721 917 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007721917 
 
THE HEALER 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW VOFK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited 
 
 LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE HEALEE 
 
 BY 
 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 AUTHOK OF "together" 
 
 'Neia f orfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
 All riffhte reserved 
 

 
 7;^y 
 
 CoPTItlOHT, 1911, 
 
 bt the maomillan company. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1911. 
 
 J. S. Cashing Co. — Berwick <fc Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., tJ.S.A, 
 
PART ONE 
 
THE HEALEE 
 
 The log-house with its broad low roof nestled , prettily 
 among the thick firs of the forest, — a bit of the old wilder- 
 ness still untouched that reached from the northern moun- 
 tains in a long blunt headland Uke a stubby finger into the 
 lake. The camp, of which the log-house was the centre, 
 fronted full south across the Lake towards the rough fields 
 spotted with blackening stumps that surrounded the Settle- 
 ment. A wide piazza reached to the edge of the rocky cliff, 
 from which could be seen and heard the little blue waves 
 thirty feet below as they lapped the clean pebbly shore. 
 
 A young woman stood on the piazza looking out upon the 
 Lake, shading her eyes with one hand against the morning 
 sun ; she swept the broad expanse of water steadily with her 
 gaze as if searching for some expected object. A number of 
 small sail-boats and sailing canoes were flitting about in the 
 wide bay or making towards the narrow reach of water that 
 led past the headland into the upper Lake. But none of them 
 satisfied her eager look. The Japanese cook, who was ex- 
 amining the contents of the fish box below at the boat-house, 
 looked up and shook his head, murmuring softly to himself. 
 A complaining voice came from within the log-house. 
 
 3 
 
4 THE HEALER 
 
 "Do you see them, Vera?" 
 
 "Not yet, Aunty," the young woman replied in a low, 
 controlled voice, and turning towards the open door, she 
 added, "It's hardly time to expect them yet, is it?" 
 
 "Dr. Percy said it wasn't far," the older woman said, "and 
 it's almost noon now." 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow came out on the piazza and scanned the 
 blue waters. She was a thin, sHght woman dressed in black 
 lace with glittering stones on her aged, withered fingers. 
 Her eyes still shone keenly in the wrinkled face as she 
 glanced swiftly out across the bay to the little Settlement 
 where the flags above the wooden summer hotel were waving 
 in the breeze. With a shrug of her shoulders expressing 
 mingled indifference and impatience she turned back to 
 the house. 
 
 "You know the guide said that he lived in a valley beyond 
 the head of the Lake, and he may be away when Percy gets 
 there," the younger woman suggested. 
 
 "Oh, of course in this horrible place anything may hap- 
 pen!" the older woman burst forth. "I can't understand 
 how I let Nell and the Colonel persuade me to put myself at 
 the end of the earth where there is no telegraph, no railroad 
 — nothing civilized." 
 
 The young woman smiled slightly at this outburst. 
 
 "It hasn't been so bad until — until this accident. We've 
 been very comfortable and Nell liked it. . . . How do you 
 think she seems this morning?" 
 
 "No better ... I can't tell. She talks about her eyes, 
 not seeing clearly — everything in a mist, — oh, I should 
 have done what I wanted to at first, taken her out of this 
 
THE HEALER 5 
 
 wilderness at once — at once," she repeated with compressed 
 lips. 
 
 "But Dr. Percy thought it was nothing serious — merely 
 a slight bruise on the head where she hit that rock." 
 
 "Dr. Percy!" Mrs. Goodnow exclaimed scornfully. 
 "What does he know about anything except boats and tennis ? 
 . . . No, I should have taken her away or sent for some one 
 from the city. Dr. Jenks would have come — and been 
 here by this time." 
 
 "Nell wouldn't have it, you remember, and she seemed to 
 be all right the next day." 
 
 "In a place like this you are absolutely helpless !" She 
 looked sourly over the smiling landscape of forest and lake, 
 which lay stretched before them in the August sunlight. 
 
 "It might have been as bad anywhere else," Vera replied 
 soothingly. 
 
 "No, you can always get some one to help you — some 
 good doctor who knows his business — at least you can send 
 for one !" 
 
 She spoke with the air of one long accustomed to all the 
 convenient appurtenances of a luxurious civilization, who had 
 at the most merely to write a few words on a yellow slip of 
 paper to summon aid from the ends of the earth. 
 
 "Well," the younger woman persisted, turning again to 
 look over the Lake, "perhaps this man he's gone for can tell 
 us what to do. He has a great reputation up here. The 
 guide was telling me this morning — " 
 
 "The guide! An ignorant half-breed, ■ — what does he 
 know about a doctor ? He's some country fakir, — greasy 
 herb doctor, most likely — oh !" 
 
6 THE HEALER 
 
 "Dr. Percy has seen him, and he says the man has had 
 training, is a graduate of a good school. He isn't any fakir." 
 
 "Then what is he doing 'way off here in the wilderness? 
 There must be something wrong about him or he wouldn't 
 have hidden himself away in this hole!" the old woman 
 snapped acidly. 
 
 "We shall find out soon !" 
 
 " It makes no difference what he says — ■ I shall take Nell 
 away to-morrow if she's well enough to travel — or send for 
 some one I know about !" She turned back to the house, 
 her slight black figure stiff with resolution. A voice could 
 be heard from within calling faintly. Just then the younger 
 woman, who had lingered at the edge of the piazza, ex- 
 claimed : — 
 
 " There ! They're coming ! " 
 
 A sail-boat that had rounded the point while the two 
 women were talking was ploughing swiftly towards the dock 
 with a white ripple of foam falling from its prow. As the 
 little boat veered to avoid a reef the figures of two men could 
 be seen against the white sail. 
 
 "He's found him — I'm so glad!" the younger woman 
 exclaimed, a confident smile lighting her pleasant face. 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow grunted her dubitation, but turned again 
 to look at the boat. 
 
 "I'm sure he will be able to help us," Vera Councillor said 
 buoyantly. Resting her smooth, firm hands on the raihng 
 she watched the boat glide up to the float. Her lips were 
 parted as though she would like to call to the men, to hurry 
 them. 
 
 The tall man standing in the prow of the boat, his hands 
 
THE HEALER 7 
 
 thrust carelessly in the pockets of his corduroy trousers, 
 looked up at the camp, caught the young woman's eye, then 
 dropped his examining glance to the boat-house, the Japanese 
 servant, who, abandoning his fish, ran to fend off the boat. 
 He jumped ashore leisurely, then waited while his companion 
 made the boat fast, and followed him at a lazy pace up the 
 wooden steps to the camp. 
 
 There the women were waiting, the younger one a little in 
 advance of the other. 
 
 "I'm so glad you've come," she murmured to the little 
 man, who arrived on the piazza puffing slightly and mop- 
 ping his forehead. "Mrs. Goodnow is so uneasy." 
 
 "How is she?" he asked, anxiously; "any change?" 
 
 "Just the same." 
 
 Meanwhile the two women were rapidly examining the 
 stranger. Mrs. Goodnow's critical glance swept from the 
 large thin face, curiously pallid beneath the sparse black 
 beard, over the gaunt figure clothed in a rough faded 
 mackinaw and stained brown trousers, to the worn 
 moccasins and coarse woollen socks. The man waiting at 
 the edge of the piazza seemed to comprehend this supercilious 
 examination. He frowned sUghtly, and the young woman 
 noticed that his face became suddenly ugly, sullen. 
 
 "ThisisDr. Holden," the young doctor said hastily. "Mrs. 
 Goodnow, Miss Councillor." 
 
 The stranger barely nodded, and demanded roughly — • 
 
 "Where's the sick woman?" 
 
 He stepped forward as though to enter the place at once, 
 avoiding all preliminary explanation. But Mrs. Goodnow 
 stood stiffly before the door, and the two confronted each 
 
8 THE HEALER 
 
 other in a hostile pause. The woman's face spoke plainly 
 her suspicions of this uncouth backwoodsman, on whom she 
 had secretly built great expectations. It was an awkward 
 moment of suppressed antagonism from which an explosion 
 was to be feared. The hotel doctor — a mere lad in clean 
 white flannel — fidgeted in the rear. Then Vera Councillor, 
 with a smile of sympathetic comprehension on her expressive 
 lips, intervened. 
 
 "This way," she said, pointing to the end of the piazza, 
 from which a door opened into a smaller cabin. "Your 
 patient is here," she said, holding open the door, as the stran- 
 ger hesitated shghtly. With a shrug he followed the young 
 woman into the darkened room. 
 
 "The light troubles her," she whispered to him as he crossed 
 the threshold. Without replying, he strode noiselessly to 
 the bed in the further corner of the room. There in an 
 expanse of white linen lay a girl, her thick brown hair loosely 
 rippling over the pillow. She opened her eyes, as if from 
 sleep or revery, and looked up at the stranger with a confident 
 yet wondering expression upon her childish face. Her lips 
 trembled between pain and a smile of greeting. 
 
 Vera Councillor remained behind the doctor, closely watch- 
 ing the two, holding her breath. The others — the young 
 doctor and the mother — came in and stood at the foot of 
 the bed. Through the half-opened door the bright sunshine 
 fell across the cabin room and touched the white surface of 
 the bed. There was the hush of expectancy, unbroken ex- 
 cept by the rustle of Mrs. Goodnow's silk waist as she moved 
 hostilely. 
 
 The doctor knelt down beside the bed, frowning as if he 
 
THE HEALER 9 
 
 were focussing his eyes and also all his mind upon the sick 
 girl, so that he might see clearly, even beneath the flesh. It 
 was a long moment. . . . The girl looked back at his frown- 
 ing face bravely at first, and the hopeful expression of normal, 
 buoyant youth in her prevailed. Then the smile faded 
 before the penetrating eyes. Lying there between two 
 fluffy pillows, her rounded figure muffled by the thin blanket, 
 her bare arms crossed before her, the white neck swelhng 
 gently with her breathing, she was all lovable, youthful, — a 
 creature of fresh vigor suddenly arrested. . . . 
 
 Slowly her face blanched, a spasm of pain twisted the 
 mouth, a look of terror came into the eyes. 
 
 "Tell me! What is the matter?" she whispered. 
 
 The doctor passed his hand slowly across the line of vision, 
 watching the expression of the girl's eyes. 
 
 "I — I don't see well," she murmured. "It seems far 
 away — far off — everything ! " 
 
 " How long has it been hke that ? " the doctor asked gently. 
 
 "I don't know — yesterday and to-day." 
 
 "It happened Monday," the young doctor volunteered, 
 coming forward to take part in the affair. "But she seemed 
 all right at first." 
 
 "How long has she been hke this?" the other one de- 
 manded roughly, as if in accusation. 
 
 "Not more than a day — well — the symptoms were mis- 
 leading," the young man stammered. The other turned back 
 to the patient and softly touched her head, pushing aside 
 the waving hair. 
 
 "A slight contusion above the ear, as I told you," the 
 young doctor said. "You know- she was diving from the 
 
10 THE HEALER 
 
 boat-house, and must have hit her head against a rock. 
 After the first shock there were no symptoms, — no definite 
 symptoms," he corrected himself, "until yesterday morning. 
 Then the symptoms became more alarming." He stam- 
 mered on, using the word "symptoms" again and again, until 
 the other man shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. 
 
 "She seemed to be getting better until last night," Vera 
 Councillor explained in ordinary language. 
 
 The doctor raised the white arm a few inches, let it fall, 
 then passed his hands softly over the rounded figure, and his 
 eyes fixed upon the face now white and blank. He seemed 
 to be reading the body and the mind of the girl. 
 
 "We should have telegraphed at once for our city physician 
 — I said so at the time — you never can tell !" Mrs. Good- 
 now said, aggressively. "I don't know why we are losing 
 time like this !" 
 
 "The shock — the nervous shock — would account for the 
 symptoms, don't you think?" the little doctor put in with 
 a faint professional swagger. The stranger did not seem to 
 hear them. He said to the girl : — 
 
 "You feel cold?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Your arm is heavy?" 
 
 "And my body — so heavy," she murmured, "when I 
 try to move." 
 
 Her eyes opened more widely, as if in growing terror. 
 
 "What is it?" she whispered. 
 
 The long, bony fingers moved hither and thither, test- 
 ing the flesh. Again he raised one arm, then the other, 
 passed his hand to and fro before the girl's eyes. At last 
 
THE HEALER 11 
 
 he rested motionless on his knees, looking, looking as if to 
 pierce the flesh, to discover the hidden error in the body 
 before him. 
 
 "Is it anything serious ?" the girl whispered. "Tell me !" 
 
 "Yes!" he replied gently. His hand touched her head 
 where the hair pushed back showed an abrasion. The girl's 
 eyes pleaded with him silently. Abruptly he rose and walked 
 into the next room, as if to avoid the pleading glance. 
 The young doctor followed, stammering, — "Slight concus- 
 sion — it will pass off — rest, complete quiet for a few days, 
 don't you think?" 
 
 The stranger started, as if a trance had been broken, and 
 looked contemptuously at the young man in white flannels. 
 
 "Well, what do you think is the matter?" Mrs. Goodnow 
 demanded irritably. 
 
 Her indignation, suppressed during the silent examination 
 at the girl's bedside, broke out afresh. She had never been 
 treated in this manner by any doctor. 
 
 "Paralysis," the stranger said sharply. 
 
 "Paralysis !" the mother cried. 
 
 Vera's hands, playing with nasturtiums in a large silver 
 bowl, trembled, and the red flowers fell upon the floor. 
 
 "I didn't think it could be as bad as that," the young 
 doctor said. 
 
 "Anybody could see what's the matter," the other replied 
 shortly. 
 
 He looked speculatively over the large comfortable room 
 of the cabin. 
 
 "What do you mean?" Mrs. Goodnow demanded. 
 
 "I mean," said the doctor, slowly, "your daughter has a 
 
12 THE HEALER 
 
 cerebral hemorrhage — pressure here ! " He indicated the 
 spot with his finger on his head. "Paralysis has set in 
 already. You can see yourself that her hmbs are numb, 
 and her eyesight is affected." 
 
 "It will get worse?" Vera asked. 
 
 "Yes — unless the pressure is removed." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "By an operation, of course — " 
 
 "We must send for Dr. Jenks — at once!" Mrs. Good- 
 now cried, bustling towards the door. 
 
 "Whereto? The city? . . . Another twenty-four hours 
 it might be too late." The man's tone was coldly informa- 
 tional. 
 
 "There must be some other good doctor we can get hold 
 of." 
 
 "There's a doctor at Belle River. But he knows less than 
 I do." The stranger smiled. "Besides, it would take eight 
 hours to get him here — at least." 
 
 "Oh, these awful wild places !" the old woman complained, 
 upbraiding the wilderness for her troubles. The stranger 
 turned towards the door. 
 
 "You think that surgical interference is imperative?" the 
 young doctor asked. 
 
 "If you want to save her !" 
 
 "Is it as serious as that?" Vera demanded, coming to him 
 and standing between him and the door, as if to prevent his 
 escape. "Is it — dangerous?" 
 
 " You mean fatal ? . . . It is always dangerous to go into 
 the brain, of course. But it is done — about two cases in 
 five successfully." 
 
THE HEALER 13 
 
 "I won't hear of it !" the mother cried hysterically. "I 
 won't believe it — until somebody besides a country doctor 
 tells me it is so." 
 
 The stranger stepped nearer the door without a word, as if 
 he considered the matter settled. 
 
 "I think," said the young doctor, assuming his professional 
 air, "it would be well to have further consultation before 
 undertaking such a major operation — " 
 
 "Are you sure?" the young woman demanded, with gleam- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "Another day would be too late?" 
 
 "Unless there were a miracle." 
 
 "And the operation has been done successfully?" 
 
 He nodded an answer to her intelligent eyes. 
 
 "I did it myself once^ — -and the man lived." 
 
 " I won't hear of it ! An operation like that — ■ up here — 
 no nurses!" Mrs. Goodnow clamored. And the young 
 doctor murmured his approval. 
 
 "I'm sure it would be taking a large risk." 
 
 "Of course," the stranger sneered. "One takes large 
 risks — before death !" 
 
 "It may not be so at all," Mrs. Goodnow protested. All 
 her dissatisfaction with the situation rang in her domineering 
 voice. The jet ornaments about her withered neck rustled 
 defiance at this uncouth stranger, who dared suggest such a 
 preposterous invasion of her ordered world. 
 
 The stranger turned away, and this time he stepped 
 outside the house. The matter was finished, it seemed, so 
 far as he was concerned. 
 
14 THE HEALER 
 
 But a cry from the adjoining room where the sick girl lay- 
 arrested him. 
 
 " I must speak to him ! Please, Vera — call him back ! 
 I must, must!" 
 
 It was a voice of one in pain, — a cry of appeal. The 
 stranger hesitated, then turned and entered the room again. 
 The sick girl had struggled up on her pillows. Feebly raising 
 a hand to her head she pushed back the tumbled brown hair 
 from her forehead. Her flushed childish face with the wide 
 appeahng eyes seemed more lovely than before. 
 
 "Come here!" she cried. "Don't leave me." 
 
 She stretched out uncertainly a hand to him. Mrs. Good- 
 now, who had rustled into the room, made a motion to defend 
 his approach, but brushing her aside the doctor took the 
 slight figure in his arms and rested it gently on the pillows. 
 With one hand clasping her arm he looked down into her 
 frightened eyes. 
 
 "Tell me what it is — what will happen to me," she whis- 
 pered. 
 
 The rough stranger, whose manner had been overbearing 
 and contemptuous to the others, also indifferent, became 
 suddenly timid, hesitant. 
 
 "Tell me — I can bear it !" she urged. 
 
 "The trouble is here," he said, touching the rippling hair 
 above the temple. 
 
 "Shall I — shall I — die?" She brought out the word 
 with a sigh of effort. 
 
 There was a moment of silence in the room before he spoke, 
 while they two, as if removed, far away from the others, looked 
 at the thing before them. Then he spoke, firmly, gravely:— 
 
THE HEALER 15 
 
 "Perhaps, — unless something is done to help you." 
 
 "It's a lie !" the mother cried. 
 
 A slight contraction of the girl's brow indicated that she 
 had heard the words. She said: — 
 
 "Tell me everything." 
 
 And in a few words he described the thing to her, what had 
 happened, what must happen to her soon unless the miracle 
 came ; also the operation he had advised, — the cutting of 
 the skull, the relief of the spot of pressure on the brain — all. 
 She listened intently, and when he had finished she bent her 
 head simply as a child might proffer a hand to have a splinter 
 taken out, saying: — 
 
 "You will do it for me ? You will save me from death — 
 or worse?" 
 
 The mother struggled forward, protesting incoherently 
 until the girl calmed her, saying: — 
 
 "Please! Mother!" 
 
 And all was silence there again while these two alone de- 
 bated the question. A curious tremor shook the man's arm. 
 He released his hold upon the girl, and standing above her, 
 his long fingers merely touching her hair, looked and looked. 
 
 "You can do it!" she whispered. "You will do it?" 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "I will do it!" 
 
 Immediately there rose a clamor of protesting voices, the 
 mother crying out — "I won't have it — leave this house," 
 — and the httle doctor saying in a flustered manner, " You 
 can't do that, you know ! " 
 
 The girl had closed her eyes wearily and lay white and 
 still upon her pillows. She had made her choice, it seemed, 
 and now she waited for him to perform his part. 
 
16 THE HEALER 
 
 "Take that woman from the room," he said to Vera 
 Councillor peremptorily. "Let the girl have quiet! 
 You," he said to the little doctor, "come with me. I 
 shall need you." 
 
 Suddenly, with that decisive "yes," he had become another 
 man, no longer indifferent, hesitant, timid, but commanding j 
 and assured. He turned again to the girl, who opened her 
 eyes and looked up at him, a little smile struggling to her lips. 
 
 "I shall come back soon," he said. "We must lose no 
 more time." 
 
 The smile fluttered up over her face, and she closed her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Now!" he said briskly to the little doctor, and strode 
 outdoors with the other at his heels. 
 
 Inside the large living room Vera Councillor was dealing 
 with the mother, her calm voice interrupted by the woman's] 
 hysterical cries, — "He shall never do it — I won't have it 
 — we can send for some one — it will take only two days to 
 get a doctor from the city — no nurses, nothing — oh, oh, — 
 why did I ever come up to this horrible place ! " . . . 
 
 "Nell has decided for herself," the calm voice was saying.l 
 "It is her chance — her one chance." .' 
 
 The little doctor followed submissively, like a clerk with 
 his orders, behind the stranger, down the long flight of 
 wooden steps to the boat-house, and hastened to unmoor the 
 sail-boat and get up sail. Vera Councillor, looking from the 
 door of the camp, could see the tall, gaunt man in the sternal 
 his hand on the rudder, appa-rently giving orders to the littlei 
 doctor. "All of a man — ^that one !" she murmured to her-| 
 self, as the little boat heeled over under the freshening breezej 
 
II 
 
 To continue in the words of Vera Councillor to her most 
 intimate correspondent of that period : — 
 
 "More has happened to us in the last twenty-four hours 
 than I can possibly put on paper. In this remote corner of 
 the wilderness the wholly unexpected has come down upon 
 us — in a flood. There was a dreadful accident to Nell four 
 days ago. I will say at once that the crisis is over, and I 
 think all will be well. She will recover wholly, thanks to — 
 no, I must return to the very beginning and try to tell my 
 story in orderly fashion ! 
 
 "You know how Nell and I persuaded 'Aunty,' as I always 
 call Nell's mother, to accept the Colonel's offer of his camp at 
 Lake Sanguishine this summer. They are still in mourning 
 for Mr. Goodnow, and Aunty is so difficult to manage among 
 strangers. And we wanted something different, both Nell 
 and I. We found it ! Sanguishine is far, far north in the 
 depth of the Canadian wilderness. 'Nothing between us 
 and the North Star,' as the guide says. You go north as 
 far as the railroad will carry you, then crawl for a day through 
 the woods over a rough road beside a roaring river to the 
 end of the Lake, then by boat to the Settlement on the other 
 side. Here you are quite beyond the ordinary world, in a 
 land of queer 'lumber jacks' and half-breed trappers, a few 
 c 17 
 
18 THE HEALER 
 
 fishermen and hunters from the cities, like the Colonel, and I 
 that is all ! It is lovely, too, — ■ wonderful in its way. But 
 I can't stop to paint the scene : you must supply landscapel 
 for yourself. Endless lakes and rivers, a low range of moun- 
 tains across the northern horizon, and everywhere the dark 
 wilderness. The Colonel's new lumber company is doing its ' 
 best to destroy that, stripping all the valleys and floating the 
 logs down the river to the railroad. This camp, — the Eyrie, | 
 they call it, — is very comfortable, as one might expect of 
 the Colonel. There are a few other such camps about the •] 
 Lake, and at the Settlement on the other shore is a barney 
 sort of hotel, — -first sign of the invaders. In the hotel, along 
 with the usual summer trash, a nice young doctor, Percy 
 Farrold, by name, fresh from his medical course, and paying 
 his board, I suspect, by looking after possible invalids. One 
 of the Colonel's friends brought him over to the Eyrie and he 
 soon became, of course, Nell's summer experience. 
 
 " Imagine a growing affair between our lively -Nell and 
 this fresh-cheeked, well-bred little doctor ■ — ■ picnics about the : 
 Lake, canoe trips by moonUght; mama's- peevish oppo- 
 sition, smilingly overridden by Nell. How could she expect I 
 a pretty girl of twenty not to try her hand on such an easy 
 subject as Dr. Percy? 
 
 "There was the daily swim. He taught her to dive, and 
 there all our trouble began. They went in off the boat-house ;| 
 just below the camp. They dove from the roof, straight i 
 down. Poor Nell discovered a sunken rock that no one 
 knew was there — in a word the accident ! 
 
 "At first it seemed nothing at all, a mere bruise. When 
 she came up she was a bit faint, but she insisted on diving i 
 
THE HEALER 19 
 
 again before coming in to dress. Dr. Percy tried to per- 
 suade her to rest — a mere boy, that fellow, for all his degree ! 
 After luncheon she lay down of her own accord, complaining 
 of a headache. Dr. Percy came over to prescribe, and there 
 was a doll's play between them, — the flirtation of puppies. 
 The doctor ordered rest, a sleeping powder. We all thought 
 nothing of it. And the next day Nell insisted upon getting 
 up and dressing before Dr. Percy came. You should have 
 seen his professional manner ! 
 
 "But the next day there was no more play. Nell was ill, 
 — even Dr. Percy could see that. He talked about a nervous 
 shock, — rest and quiet, — and left more soothing powders. 
 All that day and the next something heavy seemed to come 
 over the camp. I know now what it was — fear ! Then it 
 seemed merely the loss of Nell's singing voice, her laughter, 
 and the light in her eyes. She lay in her bed so still, so heavy, 
 scarcely opening her eyes. Aunty fussed, of course, but 
 accepted Dr. Percy's assurance that it was 'nothing serious.' 
 In the afternoon the big Canadian guide, — a half-breed 
 follower of the Colonel's, — came to her door and looked at 
 her lying still in the bed, and shook his head. He adores 
 her as we all do. Then he came to me and said : — 
 Mees, — she must have the doctor ! ' 
 '"But Jean,' I said, 'she has all the doctor there is — 
 he was here the whole morning.' 
 
 Not him ! ' Deep scorn. ' A real doctor — the healer — ' 
 Who ? ' I said, thinking by chance some one of reputation 
 had come into the neighborhood without our knowing it. 
 
 "But so far as I could make out his patois he wanted us 
 to call in some wonderful wild man of the woods, a herb doc- 
 
20 THE HEALER 
 
 tor, who lived off over the hills in a neighboring valley. I 
 told Aunty and Nell of it, and we laughed together over 
 Jean's ' healer,' picturing him as a long-bearded fakir, 
 cunning and dirty and ignorant, the sort that would impress 
 these simple people. At the end, however, Nell closed her 
 eyes wearily, murmuring, ' Why not ? ' I could see she 
 was reaching out for some help beyond what Dr. Percy could 
 offer. That afternoon she sank farther into a sort of stupor, 
 and when Dr. Percy came over in the evening he was clearly 
 frightened. I saw at once that he knew nothing at all about 
 her case. Aunty talked of telegraphing to the city for a 
 doctor — a matter of days. 
 
 '"We might get Holden over,' he suggested. 'He's had 
 more hospital experience than I.' 
 
 '"Who is Holden?' I asked. 
 
 "And it seems Holden was the guide's medicine-man. Dr. 
 Percy had met him once at the Settlement, — a rough speci- 
 men, he said, in appearance, but no fakir, with a fine educa- 
 tion and evident talent. He had buried himself in this 
 wilderness for some unknown reason, and had got a great 
 reputation among the natives, the lumber men and half- 
 breeds. 'There are stories about him, you know,' he said 
 helplessly. 'What?' I asked. 'Oh, I guess he's pretty 
 rough — dissipated, lives the life of the people, that's all, 
 — just not a gentleman.' 
 
 "We were beyond thinking of such things! 'Take the 
 guide and find him,' I urged. Even Aunty was for clutching 
 at any straw, though she wanted to send telegrams down to 
 the railroad also. ... So another night went by, awful — 
 and we dragged ourselves through it somehow, with the 
 
THE HEALER 21 
 
 desperate hope of this stranger. Nell lay in her heavy 
 stupor. 
 
 "In the morning Percy fetched the doctor in his sail- 
 boat, — a great lump of a man, with long thin arms and 
 legs, a bony face half covered with a scrubby black beard, 
 — fine eyes, though, under his mop of tousled hair. He was 
 dressed like a lumber jack. Not a herb doctor, surely, but 
 hardly more promising at first view ! I confess to disappoint- 
 ment. I suppose I had let my imagination play overnight 
 — and he did not seem on the surface the ' healer ' to lead us 
 out of our distress. You know Aunty's manner with any 
 one she thinks she can bully. She was at her worst that 
 morning, — insulted him before he had crossed the thresh- 
 old. But he had his revenge later. 
 
 "After he had seen Nell he told us that the only chance 
 was an immediate operation. 'I have telegraphed for com- 
 petent advice,' said Aunty. Hard on poor Dr. Percy, that ! 
 'Another day's delay would be fatal.' He had her at the 
 sharp corner. But no — ■ she was obstinate — would take 
 the risk, — even with her daughter's hf e at stake. He was 
 leaving the place in disdain. I had done what I could to 
 detain him, for I felt somehow that he knew. But in the end 
 Nell settled the matter herself ! 
 
 "She called him back. She wanted to know the worst. 
 He told her all — brutally, I thought. Perhaps it was best. 
 He described the horrible operation necessary, the small 
 chance even at the best. She never faltered. Those two 
 debated the issue and she decided. 'Can you?' 'I can.' 
 'Will you?' And after a moment's dreadful pause, 'I 
 will!' 
 
22 THE HEALER 
 
 "Aunty bawled, of course, would never consent, and all 
 that. He ignored her utterly. I did my best to calm her, 
 for I saw it must be done. Afterwards we were all swept 
 completely from the scene — even httle Dr. Percy, with his 
 funny professional importance, his lover's hopes. For those 
 two, as if they were quite alone in the world, removed from 
 us to some far-off place where they saw death, looked 
 death in the face. His eyes asked, 'Have you the cour- 
 age ? ' Her eyes said, ' I have — and faith in you ! ' 
 
 "I have been asking myself since, — 'What made that 
 faith, so utter, so swift ? What made our simple little Nell 
 suddenly meet her Fate, take the choice upon herself, and 
 will to put herself in the hands of this rough stranger ? ' . . . 
 Well, he went off to get ready, and I was left to subdue poor 
 Aunty as best I might." 
 
 After a break, the story continued in a firmer script : — 
 "I can write only at odd moments when my patient 
 sleeps. You see I am n\u-se for the present. Aunty 
 wanders about the camp, sending the guide off with tele- 
 grams, lamenting the lack of a telephone. . . . 
 
 "To return, Nell was wonderful all through. After the 
 doctors had gone to make their preparations, she lay with a 
 peaceful look, confidently expecting her fate. And such a 
 smiHng glance of hope as she gave him when he next entered 
 the room, the shining instruments in his hands. Dr. Percy 
 followed him about like a dog while they made ready; he 
 had been conquered, too ! Of course Aunty burst out again, 
 — 'she should hold him responsible,' — ' it was done against 
 her wishes,' etc. He paid not the sUghtest heed. Only when 
 
THE HEALER 23 
 
 Nell said gently, 'Please, mother, don't !' he turned to me — 
 'Take that woman away and keep her out of the room,' he 
 said. Aunty went, but she will never forgive him, no matter 
 if he has saved her child's life — or more. . . . When I got 
 back to the sick room, they were about to begin, — the things 
 were ready, the doctors bare-armed and coatless. Dr. Holden 
 was standing above Nell, holding her hands in his as if to 
 give her the last word of courage. But she did not need it ! 
 It seemed almost that Percy and I ought not to be there, to 
 witness this moment between them with its intimacy. His 
 look revealed her soul, and she met it — serenely. . . . 
 
 "I have never seen an operation, nothing more than when 
 a dog's paw was put into splints. When I tell you that I 
 thought of nothing all that time, — just did what he wanted 
 done, instinctively, you will understand. First the ether 
 sleep. To see Nell fade away from us, with that gay little 
 smile still on her lips, — a smile of confidence and love of 
 life, — just a gay little wave of her hand as when she dove — 
 well, I had tears in my eyes and the basin I held shook so 
 that I had to put it down. . . . They cut away her hair, 
 turned back the flesh in a little flap, — the words somehow 
 make me shiver more than the fact did ! Then the bone, 
 until the brain itself lay bare — I won't go farther. He 
 worked so swiftly, so surely, without a word, a spare move- 
 ment of hand or eye ! There was just Dr. Percy's loud breath- 
 ing — his hands were damp and shook, poor boy ! He would 
 teach her to dive straight down into the water towards 
 death ! 
 
 "So she lay there like a fair clay image, and he did his work, 
 taking that terrible, narrow chance for her. When it was 
 
24 THE HEALER 
 
 all over, the bandages placed, Nell still under the ether, 
 he came back for a moment into the room, knelt beside the 
 bed, devouring her with those piercing eyes, counting her 
 heart beats — I shall never forget it all. 'She will get 
 well?' I whispered. I had to say something, — it had 
 been too much! 'No one can tell,' he said harshly, and 
 walked out of the room over into the woods, brushing Aunty 
 aside when she tried to waylay him. I saw him swinging 
 down the path to the headland beyond the camp. When he 
 came back Nell was waking from the ether. He left Percy 
 and me on watch, with instructions, and went off again. 
 Aunty said he was afraid to stay ! . . . You must know 
 that this strange Wild Man of the woods, — this Healer, as 
 the ignorant people hereabouts call him, — is not handsome, 
 — far from it. He is a tall, rough fellow, rather over thirty 
 years old, I should say, with a bony face like one of these 
 northern headlands, and what is curious with the outdoor life 
 he leads, very pale, — pallid, — and thin. He looks as if he 
 might have come through some terrible disease himself, and 
 had not quite got over it. It is only when he is fired with a 
 purpose, as just now at work upon Nell, that he becomes 
 something important — another person altogether. Other- 
 wise he would be repulsive. ' A dull, loutish backwoodsman j 
 you would call him, very likely, imless you had seen, as I 
 have, the lamp lighted within." 
 
 Again there was a break of several days in Miss Councillor's 
 correspondence, and when she resumed, the lines of her bold 
 hand ran jubilantly up the page as follows: . . . "Now 
 the triumph ! Everything has progressed steadily as it 
 
THE HEALER 25 
 
 ought — Nell will live ! The great Jenks arrived this morn- 
 ing with another younger surgeon, — ^a brain specialist, I 
 believe, and two nurses, — ^the result of Aunty's frantic 
 appeals by telegraph to civilization, four days late ! Our 
 Wild One was not here when they came — purposely, I be- 
 lieve. Dr. Percy met them, of course. 'Not your work,' 
 the great Jenks remarked at the first sight. Poor Percy ! 
 I must say he gave generous praise to the Wild One. 'As- 
 tonishingly neat job,' the other one said, after looking at the 
 wound. Then they both asked questions of me and Percy, 
 and at the end Dr. Jenks turned to Aunty, who hovered 
 there. 'You are to be congratulated. Madam,' he said. 
 'Not five men I know of on this side of the water could per- 
 form that operation properly. And you had the luck to find 
 a sixth up here in the wilderness — marvellous, indeed. 
 Where is the man ? ' 
 
 "Nell smiled mischievously at me while Aunty stammered, 
 'I wanted them to wait until you came — '. 'Too late, 
 then — not an hour was to be lost — you took the one chance 
 you had.' Aunty was subdued at last. She whimpered, 
 ' I have always been used to the best doctors — of good 
 standing.' Jenks laughed. 'I should have let Savage here 
 do the thing. He's one of the five — the best one, too.' 
 That little, fat, bald-headed thing — think of it ! 'But no 
 better than the one you found. I want to see him.' 'He 
 comes when he likes,' Aunty complained. ' You can never tell 
 what he will do.' Percy explained, 'He lives a good ten 
 miles from here over a rough trail.' 'Where does he prac- 
 tice — keep his hand in ? ' the little brain surgeon inquired. 
 'A thing like that can't be done off the bat, you know.' The 
 
26 THE HEALER 
 
 Great One was puzzled. So the doctors, still discussing our 
 Wild Man, went out to luncheon, which was one of those 
 frightful feeds Aunty loves to set before mankind. They 
 gorged. The fat-faced one ate and ate and drank champagne 
 without a word to any of us, not a word. All he can do, 
 apparently, is to operate on the brain. 
 
 "Presently after luncheon in came the Wild One, — 
 paddled down the lake by an old half-breed, sitting squat in 
 his crazy bark canoe and smoking his dirty black pipe. With 
 his pipe still in his mouth he came up on the piazza where we 
 were sitting, his old moccasins softly padding up the stairs, 
 and when he saw the company, stopped, scowling. 'Hello !' 
 bawled the great Jenks, 'what have we here?' 'It's he, — 
 the Healer,' I whispered. Soon the brain specialist dis- 
 played cataleptic symptoms — note my medical style — he 
 rushed up to the Wild One, and gasped, 'You! Here!' 
 The Wild One, as if far from pleased, replied curtly, ' Well, 
 what of it?' 'Oh, nothing,' the other said, 'only it explains 
 the miracle — in part.' It seems that these two have met 
 before, in some foreign hospital, I think. I tried to pump 
 the little Savage afterwards, but all he would say was that he 
 had known Fred Holden when he was a student, and had 
 heard that Holden had disappeared, — given up medicine, 
 he thought. . . . Aunty seemed somewhat appeased when 
 she realized that the Wild One was acquainted with a real city 
 doctor. But she will never recover from the moccasins and 
 the corduroy breeches, the black pipe, and his, 'Take that 
 woman out of the room !' Genius, for people like Aunty, 
 must appear only in appropriate evening clothes. 
 
 "Well, the Wild One showed no emotion over the praise 
 
THE HEALER 27 
 
 that the doctors gave his work, — seemed rather annoyed. 
 He's a sort of polyp, or dead log, when he is not in action. 
 Not even Jenks's booming shout, 'With that kit of tools, 
 too — and nothing, nothing else — sheer nerve, beside the 
 skill.' 
 
 " ' You have to use what you've got up here,' he growled. 
 
 "'Yes, of course — but I should never have gone in,' — 
 horrid words ! — the great Jenks admitted frankly. 
 
 '"It was the only chance.' 
 
 " ' I know — I should have taken the other chance,' I heard 
 him mutter to the Wild One, ' under the circumstances ! ' 
 
 "And he said quickly, 'She wanted it — her chance!' 
 So, you see, after all it was Nell who decided, who had the 
 courage, and gave it to him. 
 
 " After the doctors had had another conference over Nell, 
 they came out again on the piazza and Dr. Jenks sailed over 
 to Aunty. 'Well, Mrs. Goodnow, there is nothing for us 
 to do here, absolutely nothing. Everything is lovely. You 
 can thank your God for a miracle, Madam ! yes, a miracle of 
 luck. I'll tell you straight I'd never have had the nerve to 
 do what Dr. Holden did for you. ... Of course the young 
 lady isn't altogether out of the woods yet — there are some 
 questions to be answered in such cases when the patient gets 
 on farther. But you can hope for the best, and you are 
 in as good hands as if you were in the city. Trust your 
 Wild Man — give him your confidence ! ' Pleasant for 
 Aunty, that ! ' It's a grand place you have up here for 
 an invalid to get well in,' he continued. 'Let her take 
 her time. And now that we have made a three days' 
 journey into the wilderness we must get a holiday. Savage 
 
28 THE HEALER 
 
 and I. There should be good fishing in this lake. How 
 about it, Holden ? ' 
 
 " But the Wild One had gone. I had seen him slip off while 
 Jenks was expanding to Aunty. The canoe with the wooden 
 Indian image was sliding up the lake in the afternoon sun. 
 ' So boorish of him ! ' Aunty complained afterwards. The 
 great Jenks was miffed — I could see that. The fat surgeon 
 shook his bald head. ' Always was a crazy loon — doesn't 
 care a hoot for man or woman.' And he never came back 
 to see Nell the two days they stayed at the camp. 
 
 "Queer, wasn't it? And foolish, if you look at it from a 
 sensible point of view. I can't suppose he means to bury 
 himself in this wilderness all his life, and Dr. Jenks is the last 
 word in the city to-day, — with his large practice, his posi- 
 tion at the medical school, and hospital connections. He 
 could do everything for the Wild One if he had a mind to. 
 So it became little Dr. Percy's chance to provide diversion 
 for the Great One, and he took it as Percy always would, ar- 
 ranging everything for a mighty expedition, — guides, ',; 
 canoes, Indians, food — perhaps he supplied the fish, too. 
 That boy should be a hotel clerk or some great man's secre- 
 tary. . . . 
 
 " It was all very successful, I believe ; at least they brought 
 back with them quantities of horrid looking fish, and the 
 bald one had a beautiful crimson halo on his head. They 
 went away this morning, leaving the trained nurses behind. 
 Drat 'em ! It was too thrilling, — all of it, and I don't like 
 losing my job. . . . There's the Wild One now ! Aunty 
 has caught him. I can hear her frosty tones, saying, 
 'They must have thought it very queer, I'm sure, your not 
 
THE HEALER 29 
 
 being here.' He makes no excuses, and few remarks of any- 
 kind. Nell is calling. She will get beyond them all one of 
 these days. . . . 
 
 "So we are in for an indefinite stay, at least another eight 
 weeks, all of September and most of October. And the Wild 
 One is to be in complete command, I can see that, until Nell 
 takes hold herself. What will Aunty do ! She had her mind 
 set on going abroad the end of September, and Aunty's little 
 plans are never disturbed without a storm. The Goodnows, 
 you must know, are omnipotent, — that is, they have been 
 wise enough always to remain where they are omnipotent. 
 Aunty finds it hard to be omnipotent in this wilderness. 
 
 " I am glad ! I am in love with this wild spot, — the gentle 
 lap of the water on the rocks below, the great silent forest all 
 around, the lazy life. And the Colonel's little Jap is as good 
 as a Paris chef. In a fortnight the hotel will be closed, and 
 we shall lose Dr. Percy. But the boy grows tiresome. He's 
 a nonentity now. Nell will never look at him again. And 
 as for the other — the Wild One, you may ask — that is too 
 impossible even for my stimulated fancy ! " 
 
Ill 
 
 The summer wore away into a svmny, windless autumn. 
 Day after day the lake lay like an unruffled, velvet pool, 
 touching smoothly the black rocks, laced around its shores 
 by the shadows from the encircling forest. The hotel across 
 the bay, bereft of flaimting flags, had been deserted; the 
 transient gayety of hoUday life on the water had altogether 
 disappeared. All the camps were closed except the Eyrie, 
 whose mistress chafed at her enforced delay in the wilderness. 
 The sick girl was about once more, — in the simlight on the 
 sheltered veranda, before the blazing fire. But the strange 
 Wild One, as Vera Councillor had named the doctor, did not 
 relax his domination. Having won the first battle for life 
 itself with a fiourish of trimipets, as it were, he was engaged in 
 another, greater struggle, — a silent struggle in the autumnal 
 peace for the true balance of mind that would mean health. 
 Patient and doctor must go down together into the trough| 
 of despair, — that point of danger hinted at by the city ' 
 physicians, — and meet there the darker enemies of life. 
 More and more while this subtle hidden battle for full health 
 was going on the doctor kept his patient apart from the 
 others, took her in his canoe up the lake on little expedi- 
 tions where she might lie in solitude and drink in the 
 heahng light and air undisturbed. 
 
 As the two women stood on the piazza one afternoon and 
 
 30 
 
 i 
 
THE HEALER 31 
 
 watched tlie doctor's canoe disappear around the little head- 
 land, there was an added frown on the wrinkled brow of Mrs. 
 Goodnow, accentuating her habitual criticism of life. She 
 disapproved of the Wild One and all his works, and if she 
 dared would have forbidden these excursions. The younger 
 woman, watching the small craft float out of sight in the yellow 
 blaze of the afternoon sun, smiled to herself. She compre- 
 hended in part what this silent struggle meant, where the will 
 of the physician was calling to the will of his patient. 
 
 "How much better Nell seems to-day!" she said en- 
 couragingly. " Happier, a little, I think. And beautiful — 
 I never saw her look so — she has grown more lovely these 
 last weeks !" 
 
 The mother shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "I think she's very weak and pale," she snapped. "I 
 hope we can get her away from here next week. 1 Ve asked 
 the Colonel to send up his car. If we can only manage that 
 awful road to the railroad ! . . . I hope I shall never see 
 this place again in my life." 
 
 "It is a little dull," the young woman replied, with a mis- 
 chievous smile. "But don't hurry, Aunty. It's doing Nell 
 so much good. Every time the Wild One comes she seems 
 to shoot forward like a growing flower. He has a magic 
 about him, that man !" 
 
 " I can't see what you and Nell find in him so unusual. He 
 may be a good enough doctor, but he is a thorough boor. 
 The guide has better manners ! " 
 
 " It isn't manners that Nell needs just now, if she is to get 
 really well ! . . . She owes him everything," she added 
 meemagly. 
 
32 THE HEALER 
 
 "Oh, he'll be well paid for what he's done !" Mrs. Good- 
 now retorted with true bourgeois pride. 
 
 Miss Councillor's expressive lips curved scornfully. 
 
 "There are some things, Aunty, that can't be paid for with 
 a check." 
 
 "He'll get more than he has ever seen in his life, I've no 
 doubt. ... I don't hke to have Nell with him so much of 
 the time, — especially just now when she is not quite herself. 
 There must be something wrong about a man who buries 
 himseh in the woods hke this, if he's as clever as that Dr. 
 Savage said. Percy hinted at something about him which 
 wasn't right — I believe he had to get out of the way !" 
 
 "You don't think that he will murder Nell !" Vera Coun- 
 cillor mocked. 
 
 " I don't hke to have my daughter so much under the in- 
 fluence of a person like him," Mrs. Goodnow iterated ob- 
 stinately. "One knows nothing about him, absolutely." 
 
 "Except his power," the yoxmger woman suggested, with 
 an ironical smile. " You don't think Nell will fall in love with 
 him?" she asked wickedly. 
 
 "Vera !" the old lady exclaimed in horrified protest. 
 
 "You never can tell what sort of magic he may use !" 
 
 "Nell knows when a man is not a gentleman — " 
 
 "Women do fall in love with men who are not — gentle- 
 men," Vera suggested. 
 
 " Where is he taking her this afternoon ? " the mother asked 
 uneasily. 
 
 " To some warm spring, I beheve. He calls it the ' healing 
 spring' — it is not far away. " ' 
 
 With a yawn the yoimg woman picked up her abandone(| 
 
THE HEALER 33 
 
 novel and selected a comfortable chair. Teasing a querulous 
 old lady offered but limited amusement to her nimble wits. 
 
 Meanwhile the bark canoe was rapidly cutting the still 
 water of the lake, impelled by the Wild One's skilful short 
 strokes, ending with the Indian jerk to the paddle. The 
 doctor crouching on the tips of his moccasined feet, with a 
 faded felt hat pulled down over his brow, the sleeves of his 
 flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows, did not look like a " gen- 
 tleman," — more like one of the half-breeds that hung about 
 the Settlement to offer their services to rich strangers. His 
 glance, as he paddled dumbly, rested upon the girl, who was 
 lying before him wrapped in the folds of a rug. A small, 
 knitted cap covered her wounded head, from which the rip- 
 pling brown hair escaped and curled prettily about her temple. 
 Her upturned face was bathed by the sunUght. She lay quite 
 motionless, with closed eyes, as if she were passively drinking 
 in new life from the warm golden flood. When the canoe 
 rounded the headland and the tall firs cast shadows across 
 her pale face, she opened her eyes and looked directly at the 
 silent man with the paddle. 
 
 "I'm perfectly well to-day !" she said after a few moments, 
 with a wondering accent of joy. 
 
 "That's good." 
 
 Raising herself upon one arm she dipped her hand into the 
 ripple made by the canoe. 
 
 "It's a queer thing to be well," she murmured to herself, 
 "to feel alive once more in this good world." She stretched 
 her hands forth in invitation to the lake and wooded hills, 
 the sun and the sky, and all the picture of creation spread 
 
34 THE HEALER 
 
 there before her. A smile of inner content crept over her 
 gentle face and lighted deeper fires in the blue eyes. "All 
 this !" she exclaimed. "I seem to see it for the first time 
 as it really is." 
 
 "That's the human rebound," the doctor observed. "If 
 you hadn't gone near to death, you would never have known 
 so well what it means to five." 
 
 She drew a deep breath. 
 
 "Now I shall always know — the darkest day — what a 
 good thing life is !" 
 
 "I hope so," he said dully. 
 
 In the arc of the landscape as the canoe swung into the 
 upper reach of the lake, the blue northern hills came into 
 view. The clouds seemed pillowed on their summits for the 
 night, and the sun was softly filling them with golden rays. 
 The girl looked at the hills for a little while, then as if more 
 interested in her own small self, turned a grave face to the 
 man and said quickly: — 
 
 " You did it for me — you gave me my life ! " She nodded 
 her Uttle head with childlike positiveness. "In those first 
 days afterwards, when I seemed to be sinking, sinking into 
 some great gulf out of which I could not climb by myself, you 
 reached down a strong arm and pulled me back, — pulled 
 me out of the depths." 
 
 She shuddered at the thought of that black gulf, so near, so 
 terrible ! The doctor held his paddle suspended thought- 
 fully, and watched the drops roll down the length of the 
 blade and drop into the lake. He shook his head. 
 
 "No doctor can do that." 
 
 " Yes," she insisted gravely. " I felt something pulling me, 
 
THE HEALER 35 
 
 taking me against my will — for I was quite ready to die 
 then ! — out of that dull horrid place, taking me up into the 
 light !" She made a little gesture with her hand. "What 
 was it ?" she demanded, leaning forward and looking at him. 
 "That something stronger than I was — outside of me — 
 — pulling at me, like that — calling to me — rousing me 
 when I wanted just to sink down and sleep?" 
 
 The man's pallid face flushed, and he rephed almost 
 roughly. 
 
 "That's imagination !" 
 
 "But the operation," the girl persisted; "that wasn't im- 
 agination — it saved my hfe!" 
 
 "Well, — you took your chance. You chose," he added 
 more softly, "when you had the power to choose!" 
 
 " Yes, they would have waited — until it was too late." 
 
 He nodded, muttering briefly: — 
 
 "Most would ! But you took your chance — and got the 
 reward !" 
 
 "I believed in you," she said simply. 
 
 The man dipped the paddle more vigorously and headed 
 the canoe for a little curving bay in the lake. 
 
 "You had faith in me — the stranger!" he muttered. 
 "Perhaps that's the secret of your good fortune." 
 
 "And I was right ! My faith was answered with life — 
 dear life! " she murmured. " Is it always so ? " 
 
 He smiled at her childish earnestness. 
 
 "No," he said harshly, "far from it!" 
 
 She looked at him with puzzled eyes, as if he had roughly 
 closed an intimate, inner door that she had opened for him, 
 then turned away. Presently as the canoe shot closer in shore 
 
36 THE HEALER 
 
 beside a dark cliff topped with sentinel-like firs, she exclaimed, 
 "How mysterious it is — there might be Indians under 
 those trees ! I like this part of the lake best, — it's wilder." 
 
 "Your uncle's lumber company hasn't got its hand in here 
 yet!" 
 
 She looked at him speculatively. 
 
 "You like wild places ! That is why you live by yourself 
 'way off here in the woods, at the end of the earth, as mother 
 calls it!" 
 
 It was the fixst direct venture of personal exploration that 
 she had made, and the man started a little. 
 
 "Yes, I hke the woods," he said evasively. 
 
 On the girl's eager lips there hung other questions, but she 
 contented herself with observing: — 
 
 "It must be lonely winters !" 
 
 "Winters are the best of all. Then the real hfe of the 
 wilderness begins, in the deep snows!" 
 
 And he told her something of that winter life of the lakes 
 and forest and lumber camps, of the trappers and hunters 
 who still prowled on this frontier of the old wilderness. He 
 pictured the solitude that was not loneliness; the frozen 
 mountains in all their jewelled pomp of ice and snow; the 
 glittering sunlit days, the starlit nights, the long, long trails 
 on snow-shoes through forests and across lakes. His voice 
 grew low and melodious as he spoke of the wilderness. 
 
 The girl listened with open lips, a little smile of deUght on 
 her face, as if the man made her feel the beauty of a strange, 
 other world than that she had known, and when he paused 
 she exclaimed with ready sympathy: — 
 
 "You must love it 1" But in another moment she added, 
 
THE HEALER 37 
 
 " It must be lonely though sometimes — don't you ever 
 want people and things?" 
 
 "No," he repUed with a little smile. "I've never wanted 
 'people and things' since I came into the woods." And after 
 a pause he asked, "How would you like it?" 
 
 "I don't know," she said evasively, as if troubled by some 
 current of feeling, and presently she exclaimed, "Give me 
 a paddle ! I feel just like driving into the water !" 
 
 For answer he swung the canoe into the Uttle cove with 
 swifter strokes. Here a sandy beach formed a perfect arc 
 between two rocky headlands. Above the shore, between 
 the cliffs, was a grove of old beeches and oaks which made a 
 close shade, and among the trees a little stream of water 
 wandered to the sandy beach. Near the mouth of this 
 brook the doctor drove the canoe ashore. 
 
 " This is the place I told you about — the Spring is back 
 there." 
 
 The doctor pointed to some trees under which were the 
 ruins of two weather-beaten log cabins. 
 
 " How lovely ! " the girl exclaimed with quick enthusiasm. 
 As they came nearer the abandoned cabins she added in 
 a lower tone, "but so lonely — so deserted!" As she 
 peered beneath the dark branches, her white figure shone in 
 the sombre spot like a bit of sudden sunshine. The perfect 
 stillness there — still even for the forest, with the peculiar 
 stillness that comes after life has gone — fell upon them both 
 and hushed their voices. The girl responded with feminine 
 sensitiveness to this physical expression of the place. "It 
 seems as though somebody had just left," she observed, look- 
 ing at the gloomy cabins. 
 
38 THE HEALER 
 
 "Few people come here these days," her companion re- 
 plied. " Occasionally when I am passing this cove, I see the 
 white cloth of a tent under the trees, and sometimes the 
 Indians camp here when they come to fish in the Lake. Or 
 rarely they bring their sick here. They still have faith in the 
 heahng power of the Spring ! . . . There are some remains of 
 the huts they built long ago for sweat baths, — up nearer 
 the Spring." 
 
 They lingered within the shade of the large trees and 
 looked back at the blue water of the Lake beyond the curving 
 beach of white sand. The doctor glancing about him in the 
 woodsman's way found the charred remains of a camp fire 
 and some withered tent poles, also tin cans and yellowed 
 newspaper. 
 
 "Some white folks seem to have camped here this season," 
 he observed. "A fishing party, or perhaps some one who 
 wished to try the Indians' healing spring !" 
 
 He stooped and picked up a bit of white cloth from the 
 ground. 
 
 " Surgical bandage ! . . . This time it was somebody 
 with faith in the water," he remarked with a smile, tossing 
 away the cloth. 
 
 The massive old trees, wide-spaced, carpeted beneath with 
 a brown mat of dead foliage, the deserted cabins, window- 
 less and doorless, with mouldering roofs, above all the dead 
 stillness into which their voices fell, oppressed the girl. She 
 no longer smiled with her ready gleam of sympathy. 
 
 "It seems haunted!" she suggested, with a slight shiver. 
 "The dead might come stealing back through the forest to 
 the Spring. . . . Where is it?" 
 
THE HEALER 39 
 
 "Just behind here," the doctor replied, leading the way 
 around the cabins. 
 
 There was a plainly indicated path, but it was choked with 
 a luxuriant growth of willows and shimmering aspens and 
 long yellow marsh grasses. The little stream trickled through 
 the tangle, weaving its way from the Spring to the sandy 
 shore. The doctor finally parted the rank growth of the 
 thicket, murmuring, "There!" 
 
 She peered through the leaves and grasses. An irregular 
 pool of greenish water lay dark against the perpendicular 
 wall of rock, which completed the circle of the cliff about the 
 little cove. The edges of the pool were stained with a yellow 
 scum, and an aromatic odor of swamp growth seemed to rise 
 from its humid depths. On a ledge of the overhanging cliff 
 a vigorous mountain ash had rooted itself in a small pocket 
 of soil, and drooped its branches, filled with blood-red berries, 
 over the dark pool. 
 
 The girl gave an indifferent glance at the Spring, as if 
 she were disappointed. But the doctor, unmindful of her 
 mood, broke out a path to the base of the rock, and find- 
 ing a gourd, filled it with the greenish water and handed it 
 to her. 
 
 "Try the healing water !" he said with a slight smile. 
 
 She put the gourd to her lips, made a little grimace, and 
 handed it back. 
 
 "You don't want any more medicine!" he laughed. 
 He filled the gourd and drank slowly. "It is mildly 
 medicinal like all these warm springs, — saline and sul- 
 phurous, — enough in it to make it disagreeable to the 
 taste, and therefore make the sick believe it has curative 
 
40 THE HEALER 
 
 power. That belief is most of the good they get from it, 
 however !" 
 
 He laughed thoughtfully as he drained the gourd, and then 
 he knelt down beside the pool and gazed into its green depths, 
 from which rose a slight mist of steam. He murmured as 
 if he had quite forgotten his companion and were commun- 
 ing with himself: — 
 
 "There are many, many of these so-called 'healing springs' 
 in every country ! There's hardly a small community with- 
 out its magic water. They are scattered all over this conti- 
 nent, — thousands and thousands of famous springs. The 
 ancients had them, too, of course, and built temples about 
 them. Each was provided with a special deity for guardian 
 — some lesser god, or lovely nymph!" He glanced up at 
 the girl with a whimsical smile, as if the thought had been 
 suggested by her slender, girlish figure. "The Christian 
 world took over the traditions of these places, as it stole 
 everything it could from its pagan ancestors. The church 
 assigned saints to be the patrons and guardians of the healing , 
 waters. You have heard of Ste. Anne, and Saint Nazaire? 
 They are not far from here to the east. At last our modern 
 world discovered them after its own fashion, — ■ stripped them 
 of their legends and their mystery, analyzed their waters, 
 ascribed cures to them of a purely chemical nature, built 
 baths and resorts about them, — even bottled the healing 
 waters and sold them over the counter like everything else ! 
 To-day the miracle-working spring makes money for its 
 proprietor." 
 
 The girl listened to his musings, doubtless little interested 
 in the subject, but vaguely aware that his ideas were different 
 
THE HEALER 41 
 
 from those that might be expected of him, — as he was dif- 
 ferent, — and pleased that he took her with him into the 
 intimacy of his thought. 
 
 "I suppose they are some good," she remarked when he 
 had finished. "Mother has tried a great many of the Ger- 
 man waters; she thinks they help her sciatica." 
 
 The doctor laughed ironically. 
 
 "Oh, they still work wonders ! But it is the faith one 
 brings to them rather than the chemistry of their water that 
 is potent." 
 
 The girl picked up a branch of the red ash berries that had 
 fallen from the tree above and tucked a bunch of the vivid 
 berries in her bosom. 
 
 "It is always faith !" he exclaimed, again more to himself 
 than to the girl. "Yet there is a reason for the faith, too, 
 more or less mystical but satisfying to the human heart. 
 Through the water the sick return to nature. The water 
 itself comes from within the earth, the heart of nature, — 
 the inner source of life where all men believe instinctively 
 lies health, — peace of body and mind. And while they take 
 their 'cures' they return more or less to the simpler habits 
 of life — they chasten their flesh!" He stooped to sweep 
 away a bit of scum that clouded the green water. "You 
 see, this water bubbles up warm as blood from below, from 
 the recesses of mother earth. It isn't very hard to be- 
 lieve that it has some of the primal life-giving quality of 
 the great mother ! Maybe, 'tis so, 'tis so !" he murmured 
 softly. 
 
 The girl patted the red berries at her bosom approvingly, 
 saying: — 
 
42 THE HEALER 
 
 "And there are things in it, so you said, — things with long 
 Latin names ? " 
 
 The man laughed, reaUzing how completely his thought 
 had escaped her positive mind. 
 
 " Yes ! A trace of lythia, some bicarbonate of soda, a few 
 per cent of sulphur and magnesia, possibly some iron. . . . 
 Such chemical forces at work in the chemical elements of 
 human flesh — does that give the miracle ? " 
 
 The girl turned her lovely face to the sky, which was blue 
 and sunny up above the black cliff. As if phrasing her un- 
 spoken thought, the doctor remarked : — 
 
 " It makes no difference whether it's chemistry or faith, or 
 a mixture of both ! The cure's the thing, isn't it?" 
 
 "Of course ! . . . Could we get up there on the ledge?" 
 
 She pointed to the little recess in the cliff where the flaming 
 ash tree grew. 
 
 "I think so — we'll try ! . . . There's an old story about 
 that ledge." 
 
 The girl turned her little head like a listening bird. 
 
IV 
 
 "As I said, this must have been a place of resort for 
 the Indians for many generations. Their remains are scat- 
 tered all about the cove between the cliffs. And we know 
 they used miracle-working waters. . . . But the story ! 
 At the time when the French missionaries were first exploring 
 this country, one of the fathers made this spring his head- 
 quarters — built his cabin on that ledge above. In the 
 intervals of his long journeys through the wilderness he lived 
 here beside his spring. There was a trading post at the other 
 end of the Lake where the Settlement is now — one of those 
 frontier posts where the Indians gathered from the woods 
 with their winter's gain of skins and lounged about through 
 the warm months, fishing and quarrelling. 
 
 "This fellow — Penanguishine, they called him in their 
 soft tongue, which means the Healer — had a great reputa- 
 tion among the savages as a medicine-man. One day an 
 Indian fled to him for refuge. He was pursued by some 
 French traders whom he had offended. One of the men at 
 the post had taken the Indian's woman, and he had killed 
 him. The Frenchmen hunted the Indian around the Lake, 
 and the fellow managed to crawl up to the ledge. The father 
 took him into his cabin and promised to protect him from his 
 pursuers. Then came the drunken crew from the fort and 
 demanded their man. When the father refused to give up 
 the Indian, they shot him where he stood in the doorway of 
 
 43 
 
44 THE HEALER 
 
 his hut. His body fell forwards : his blood trickled down 
 into the warm water of the spring. 
 
 "Ever since the place has been called Sanguishine by the 
 Indians, which means the spring of the healer — and gradu- 
 ally the whole Lake has got the name. . . . They beheved 
 that the spring after it received the blood of the murdered 
 priest increased many times in healing power — but only for 
 the Indian!" 
 
 "What a pretty story !" the girl commented. 
 
 "There are some traces of a hut upon the ledge, — enough 
 to give a touch of possibility to the tale, if you want to believe 
 it. . . . Let's take a look." 
 
 He led the way back into the thicket, around the base of 
 the chff, and then they scrambled up to the rocky platform 
 not more than twenty feet square, which was completely 
 shaded by the mountain ash and the broad branches of an 
 old fir, lodged in a cranny of the cliff above. The doctor 
 pointed to a rectangular ridge of mould and moss at the edge 
 of the rock. 
 
 "We'll call that the remains of the foundations, — moss 
 grown and decayed now, mere earth." 
 
 Kicking at the, mould with his heel, he revealed a sphnter 
 of an old log. 
 
 "Somebody has lived here, at any rate, and not so many 
 hundreds of years ago ! . . . It's a fine perch for a hermit, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "I suppose the father came here to be alone, — to pray 
 and to think," the girl mused sentimentally. 
 
 "Or to be safe from the wolves!" the doctor suggested 
 with one of those quick turns that seemed to characterize his 
 
THE HEALER 45 
 
 thought. " Possibly he took advantage of the reputation the 
 Spring had among the superstitious Indians to gain power 
 over them. There's always something of the fakir in every 
 successful man. He must be ready to use all the accidents 
 for all they are worth," he mocked. . . . "And however 
 that may be, the story is a good deal like some of the legends 
 of the saints and the ancient myths ; which only shows that 
 the human heart always craves some mystery, and makes up 
 stories like these to satisfy that inner desire for miracle. 
 We must have our fable. . . . Covering thus with illusions 
 great truths," he murmured. 
 
 The girl leaned against ±he ash tree under the blood- 
 red fruit. The ledge was sufficiently elevated to give a clear 
 view over the tops of the trees in the little glade out to the 
 blue water of the Lake. The brooding silence of the autumn 
 day fell upon the place, with its tender suggestions of the 
 changing season. The girl watched the man through her 
 drooping eyehds. She had not comprehended all that he 
 had been saying, yet she listened sympathetically, as she did 
 usually when men talked to her about themselves and their 
 thoughts. She felt pleased that he cared to talk to her, and 
 somehow without a personal word having been exchanged 
 between them their intimacy had grown perceptibly since 
 they had reached the old Healing Spring. . . . 
 
 "Well," the doctor remarked, as he dropped a bunch of 
 red berries into the pool beneath, "the last healer who pitched 
 camp here was a patent medicine fellow. He sold liquor and 
 drugs to the half-breeds until the government got after him. 
 He went away in a steam launch to jail !" 
 
 "It's such a lovely spot !" the girl murmured. 
 
46 THE HEALER 
 
 The doctor paced off the distance from the ridge of mould 
 to the edge of the cUff. 
 
 "At least it's possible," he pronounced. "A man's body 
 if it fell straight forwards might drop blood into the Spring !" 
 
 "I can see him lying there !" the girl exclaimed, peering 
 over into the green pool. 
 
 " It is a rare place for any healer," the doctor mused, stand- 
 ing with crossed arms and gazing before him over the still 
 tops of the trees. "He could make a camp down there by 
 the shore and gather his sick about him. They could bathe 
 in the warm water of the Spring and lie under the trees and 
 let nature do her best for them. . . . The miracle might 
 come back, who knows? ... If he were a real healer, no 
 fakir ! . . . And the sick would come to him here in the 
 wilderness from the ends of the earth." 
 
 The girl looked at him as if she were trying to resolve 
 whether he were in earnest or merely indulging a playful 
 fancy. For the moment he seemed to have utterly forgotten 
 her presence and to be talking to himself out of his inmost 
 heart. His face, which was so often sardonic or ironical, had 
 become stern, and his eyes seemed fixed on a distant point. 
 His long, roughly clothed figure was erect. He reached a 
 hand above the Spring, as he muttered imconsciously, "If he 
 were a healer !" 
 
 The girl, somewhat awed by his manner, asked timidly: — 
 
 "Would you hke to live here and take care of sick people ?" 
 
 "I!" he exclaimed with swift irony. "I!" and then 
 more gently, " It is a fancy I have sometimes, — just a 
 dream, — a dream !" 
 
 She smiled. Women like to listen to the secret dreams 
 of men. 
 
As the sun withdrew behind the hill, the chill of an autum- 
 nal evening crept over the little grove about the Healing 
 Spring. The white mist rose more thickly from the pool, 
 and a sulphurous odor permeated the air. The girl pointed 
 up to the summit of the cliff, where the sun still lingered, 
 and said : — 
 
 "Take me up there !" 
 
 After some scrambling over the rocky ledges they reached 
 the southern headland of the hill, at the end of the cove, 
 where the sim still fell. The Lake lay translucent a hundred 
 feet and more beneath the granite shelf. The fir wood 
 reached thick and close almost to the edge of the cliff. 
 
 "What a place for a camp !" the girl cried, as she stepped 
 cautiously forward and looked down to the Lake. Color 
 had flooded back to her face. The pensive mood which had 
 come over her at the Spring had given way to her natural 
 lightness of spirit. She breathed in the sunny air, odorous 
 with balsam, with sensuous satisfaction. 
 
 "Perhaps some day," her companion replied, "I'll build 
 me a cabin here and settle down beside the old Spring ! " 
 
 "You won't live here in the woods always," she said 
 quickly. 
 
 " Why not ? I came from the edge of the wilderness — 
 
 47 
 
48 THE HEALER 
 
 down below there, a few miles. I lived there with my father 
 until he sent me away to be educated," he explained. 
 
 Sh6 waited for further revelations, but the man became 
 silent. He was looking out northwards over the billowy 
 forests to the blue summits of a low mountain range that 
 rose smoothly, forest covered, towards one dominating peak, 
 lording the land solitarily. 
 
 "They call that mountain Macatawa, — father of lakes," 
 he explained. " On the further side of it begins the unbroken 
 wilderness." 
 
 Out of the silence came the thud of oars against wooden 
 rowlocks, and presently a heavy boat pushed into sight just 
 beneath them. It was filled with workmen and camp outfit. 
 
 " There is the worm on its way into the forest, — the first 
 crew sent out to make camp higher up for the winter's cut. 
 When the snow begins to fly, the worm will be eating its 
 way up the slopes of old Macatawa !" 
 
 A little cloud of purple and rose and fine gold was floating 
 above the summit of the mountain, which unmindful of its 
 fate rose on the western horizon hke the image of tranquil 
 eternity. All the intervening valley of undulating tree-tops 
 was slowly filling with the evening haze. 
 
 The girl, responsive to beauty, nature, physical life, mur- 
 mured softly : — 
 
 "Too bad they should spoil this 1" and with a merry 
 chuckle she added, "Uncle must be the head of your 
 forest worm ! Colonel Blake is president of the company, 
 you know — and that's why we came to the Lake !" 
 
 "Yes !" he said shortly. 
 
 "Uncle says it will open up the country — develop it." 
 
THE HEALER 49 
 
 "Development !" he growled scornfully. "Do you know 
 what that means ? First a lot of drunken lumber jacks, then 
 a Settlement like ours, — disease and worse, too." 
 
 "It has to come, I suppose, before there can be civiliza- 
 tion." 
 
 She was amusing herself by tossing pebbles to the Lake 
 below and watching them disappear, without a sound, into 
 the dark water. Her delicate face and fine clothes symbol- 
 ized that state of mankind called civilization. The doctor 
 with his keen eyes fixed appreciatively upon her muttered 
 his protest. 
 
 " Change and more change, always — the Indian, the 
 trader, the freeman of the forest, then the lumber jack, the 
 tourist, and so on ! Superstition, then Faith, then Science, 
 then — nothing ! Myths, then poetry, then — business ! 
 The healer at his spring, the priest, then the fakir ! " 
 
 As if these abstract matters were of small importance, the 
 girl flashed a direct question at the man. 
 
 "Why did you come back to the wilderness?" 
 
 His face became instantly sombre, and he did not answer. 
 Again she said, softly insistent, "Tell me why !" 
 
 In the still, brooding moments of the dying day a spirit 
 seemed to rise between them, troubling both. The simple 
 relation of doctor and patient had gone forever, and suddenly 
 , something else had taken its place, — the stormy mystery 
 of man and woman ! Before the burning glance of the man's 
 eyes, the girl's face fell, but she repeated softly, "Tell 
 me, my Healer !" 
 
 "Let me be," he replied evasively, "just that — your 
 Healer — the Wild One, as your friend calls me !" 
 
50 THE HEALER 
 
 But the girl, now strangely woman at heart, refused all 
 subterfuge. "No !" she said compellingly. 
 
 And then, yielding to the woman-charm she cast, he began 
 to tell her of himself, — his boyhood in the frontier settle- 
 ment, — a mere pocket in the wilderness. His father was 
 trader and doctor, rough surgeon too, with ambitions for 
 his son. At eighteen the lad was sent away to get his edu- 
 cation in his father's profession. Laboriously, under all the 
 disadvantages of poverty and ignorance, he had slowly 
 acquired his training, in college, medical school, hospital, 
 — even got abroad for a time. 
 
 "I was determined to become a great surgeon, like the 
 famous men who taught me. The trader's son, out of the 
 wilderness, I thought to become renowned, — sought for, 
 highly paid." 
 
 The girl nodded appreciatively. It was the sort of tale 
 of ambitious youth that she could readily comprehend. 
 
 "That is why you knew how to help me 1" 
 
 "And had by me, ready for use, the tools of my trade." 
 
 " But why did you give up then — after all you had done ? " 
 
 The doctor's brows contracted. 
 
 " First because I found out that medicine was a trade, — 
 just a trade for making money out of people." 
 
 In answer to her puzzled look he explained as clearly as 
 he could the modern system of healing in the schools, the 
 hospitals, and in private practice, — the pretence and char- 
 latanry of it, the enormous fees charged, the trickery of the 
 trade. 
 
 "I was sick of it all," he said, "and no longer wanted to 
 hang out my sign." 
 
THE HEALER 51 
 
 At this time, in the revolt of his impulsive, obstinate 
 youth against the commercial methods of healing that he 
 saw in operation on all sides, he became terribly infected 
 in the hospital, and for more than a year was dangerously 
 ill. The poison, running through his system, sucked his 
 life, numbing his brain. 
 
 The girl uttered a little cry of pity. 
 
 "It left me on my knees, weak and penniless," he said; 
 "but that was not the worst !" 
 
 And he told her fearlessly the darkest part of his story, — 
 how he had yielded like so many other doctors to the temp- 
 tation of the dangerous drugs he was famiUar with, and had 
 gradually sunk into the muck of human degradation, until 
 the year before, at the bottom of his abyss, he had found the 
 courage to flee back to the wilderness, there to fight his 
 enemies alone, in silence. 
 
 "And that is all," he ended dully. 
 
 "No," she said simply. "Now you are well — ryou have 
 won!" 
 
 As if she were thinking that no man could do for her what 
 this one had done unless he had first conquered himself. 
 He waited for several moments, then replied, "Not yet !" 
 
 The words dropped dully from between his teeth. The 
 girl looked at him blankly, uncomprehendingly. She had 
 heard of vice, — a far-off thing, a kind of male disease that 
 wrecked families. 
 
 "I have not yet won," he repeated, "not cured myself !" 
 
 "But you have done good to the people up here," she 
 protested. "Dr. Percy and the guide told us — " 
 
 "That is a matter of a few medicines, a little skill — the 
 
52 THE HEALER 
 
 old sleight of hand. It means nothing. . . . No, my life 
 is failure, failure, thus far. " 
 
 "Don't say that !" she pleaded softly. 
 
 "Ambition gone, the power, the will to cure. And so I 
 have crawled back to my old home in the woods." 
 
 He laughed ironically, disagreeably. His laughter ex- 
 pressed the waste of will, the days of fruitless struggle, the 
 warfare never ending, never fulfilling in victory. Suddenly 
 he exclaimed, "Once — once only — it came back, — the 
 power ! " 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "When I dared take your life in my hands," he replied 
 slowly. "I would not have ventured that, if you had not 
 dared for me ! But you willed it — you ! You called me 
 back into the room, you remember. ... So you gave me 
 the power and the will! " 
 
 The girl remained silent before the mystery. 
 
 " And while you needed me all was well — the power was 
 mine. . . . You cannot understand now. Some day when 
 you are full woman, you may remember and understand. 
 . . . You gave more than you received." 
 
 "But you were strong," she said wonderingly. "You 
 took me in your strong arms, and dragged me out of the 
 gulf into which I was slipping, up, up into the light, into life 
 — this ! " 
 
 She would not renounce her man of power in face of his 
 confession of weakness. 
 
 "You gave it all to me," he repeated. "You put your- 
 self into my hands — you willed for me — you trusted — 
 you dared ! " 
 
THE HEALER 53 
 
 It was a litany of love and adoration. The woman smiled 
 with dreamy eyes. The passionate words made her large 
 to herself, powerful over this man — her Healer ! 
 
 "I fought for your hfe," he said, "as I never fought for 
 anything in this world." 
 
 "You won it!" 
 
 "We won!" His voice rang triumphantly for the first 
 time. "We took you from what might have been worse 
 than death itself." 
 
 She looked at him appealingly, as if she would be saved 
 from the spirit that hovered between them, the spirit of 
 victory in him, of yielding in her. 
 
 "Now you will go on," she said evasively, "and do more 
 — more than you ever dreamed of ! " 
 
 "The night comes," he replied heavily. . . . 
 
 She rose and faced the mountains, a little smile of happi- 
 ness on her lips. She laid a gentle hand on his arm, timidly, 
 as if to say, "All will be well, my Healer, with you and with 
 me !" His burning eyes brought vivid color to her face. 
 
 "You live over there?" she questioned, pointing to the 
 slope of the moimtain. 
 
 "Yes, in the Valley of the Seven Lakes." 
 
 "You will take me there !" 
 
 "No, never!" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "It is an evil place," he muttered, "unfit for you." 
 
 " You will take me there some day ! " she urged. 
 
 "Never!" 
 
 And then the spirit seemed to be speaking through the 
 man's lips. " Because I love you ! . . . love you, too much !" 
 
54 THE HEALER 
 
 In her heart she had known that this would be so, even 
 from the first when she had looked into his eyes and asked 
 for life from him. She knew that it would happen so to 
 her in this strange September day with the sweet sunlight 
 and the scent of earth and tree, the mirror of the blue lake 
 beneath, the dark glade about the Healing Spring with its 
 old memories of pain and human suffering — she had always 
 known it would be like this. Here in the silence of the wilder- 
 ness her lover would come to her and whisper the words, 
 "Because I love you !" 
 
 It was not the voice of the man, but the voice of the spirit 
 breathing through him, — the spirit of the air, of life, of 
 all things uttering itself through those white set lips, shining 
 in the smouldering eyes of this one, so near, so strange ! 
 Other lovers had spoken at her unwilling ear, and she had 
 turned away. 
 
 "Hush !" she said to him, her hand upon his arm, as 
 though fearing something that came towards them in the 
 twilight from afar off. 
 
 Motionless they stood there in the gathering night, looking 
 out into the vague wilderness, up to the tip of the moimtain 
 where rested the little cloud, rose and purple and fine gold. 
 
VI 
 
 Once more Miss Councillor took up her observing pen, 
 and after preluding in a satiric vein, continued as follows: — 
 
 '"Uncle Stanny' popped in late yesterday afternoon. As 
 soon as the steamer docked, he whisked up here in his pri- 
 vate car, which awaits us at Beaver Falls, only forty miles 
 away. Aunty has revived. The thought of the comfort- 
 able 'Pilgrim' scarcely a day's journey away fills her with 
 renewed confidence in life. She is for breaking away at 
 once, but the Colonel, now that he is here, has business of the 
 lumber company to attend to. So Aunty must still her urban 
 passion for a few days longer. 
 
 "Even I am restless, for the first time, now that the city 
 wheels are in active motion. In spite of all this glorious 
 October sunshine, with the Lake a mad blue dehght, and the 
 trees about its edge all flaming in color, I want to run. 
 Nature alone, like yourself all to yourself, becomes a little 
 fearsome : a kind of awesome thing creeps over the wilder- 
 ness nights, like — raw tragedy. . . . Oh, I just haven't 
 enough to do except think. The nurses have taken all my 
 small duties — I have lost my importance. Aunty reads 
 novels and fusses with the little Jap. The doctor, who is 
 about most of the days, has eyes and words only for his 
 patient. Not one for me ! You know, Gerald dear, I am 
 a companionable sort; I simply can't read all night and 
 
 55 
 
56 THE HEALER 
 
 make eyes at the Lake all day. I caught myself regretting 
 Dr. Percy's departure. Fancy ! 
 
 "And Nell? When she isn't resting quite by herself, 
 according to orders, she is off somewhere with her Healer. 
 The Wild Man of the woods has become complete dictator 
 of the camp. How Aunty hates him ! Ever since that day, 
 now almost twelve weeks ago, when Nell put herself in his 
 hands, he has never let go his hold. Those fearful first weeks 
 after the operation, when Nell seemed to go down into a 
 black gulf of weakness and despair, he was really quite won- 
 derful. He appeared to have absolute confidence in himself, 
 while we held our breaths over our poor wounded girl, with 
 that frightful gash in her head. (I shudder even now as I 
 write about it.) But the Wild Man knew ! Conceit, Aimty 
 called it; divination, rather. While we quaked he went 
 about his task, as if he had the matter all arranged with 
 God. ... So he pulled her out. It was magnificent to 
 to see him drag her back from that awful fate. Each time 
 he came he seemed to touch an inner spring in the girl, and 
 she responded with a new sign of control, of health. 
 
 "When Nell began to be like herself once more, to laugh 
 and make little jokes, — playfully to disobey orders, — he 
 became tyrant man pure and simple. He threatened to 
 take her and the nurses to some spot farther up the Lake 
 and have them live in a tent there until the cure was com- 
 plete. That finished Aunty ! Yesterday they were gone for 
 a long time exploring some place called the 'Healing Spring.' 
 It was dark when they came back, and Aunty, emboldened 
 by the Colonel's presence, said something before the Wild 
 One about 'prudence' and 'propriety.' Nell was muchdis- 
 
THE HEALER 57 
 
 tressed ; ' Oh, please, mother, don't ! ' and Aunty submitted 
 gloweringly. But some day she and the Wild One must 
 have it out, and Aunty, as you know, can be nasty. 
 
 " I think she has some reason now for her feeUng of antago- 
 nism. This man has laid a kind of spell upon our light-hearted 
 Nell. She is extraordinarily different since her illness in 
 many little ways, — older of course. Much of the time she 
 seems quite remote. You remember how gamine she was ? 
 Now she is serious. It is as if she were living in a world just 
 a httle outside ours, never wholly here except perhaps when 
 he is with her. When she came in last night she barely 
 noticed the Colonel, and moved as if she were still in a fasci- 
 nating dream. Do you suppose that he could have done 
 something to her, when he had her mind, her very soul, in 
 his touch ? hypnotism? — no, that vulgar explanation would 
 not account for it ! 
 
 "Love, then? If that is the answer, then love does re- 
 create ! And certainly the effect of Nell upon him is most 
 extraordinary, too. She has made him over quite. He is 
 no longer the mere boor. Even outwardly he has got a kind 
 of dignity, carries himself erectly, as if sure of himself. And 
 his face, when he looks at her, is illumined, like the face of an 
 adoring warrior in an Italian altar piece, or like the face 
 of one who in the morning sees the light of hope after a night 
 of black despair. He worships her, that is plain enough. 
 Worships our pampered little Nell with her sweet tooth 
 for all the pleasant luxuries of hfe, — a flirting, breezy, 
 yes, quite unpoetic, young woman ! If he loves her, 'tis the 
 love we women dream of and never find, — worship, adora- 
 tion, reverence, — not desire ! Love of that temper makes 
 
58 THE HEALER 
 
 us women feel our power over the brute in you men, — first 
 and last time ! 
 
 "Perhaps I am letting my imagination go too far. It is 
 probably nothing more than a case of doctor and patient, — 
 the triumph of skill and the joy of health. At least it has 
 not gone beyond look and tone of voice, — an alphabet 
 that only a woman can read properly. Nature teaches us. 
 I doubt if they themselves know whereto they are swimming 
 in the remote ether in which they live. 
 
 "If he should aspire to the daughter of John Graham 
 Goodnow, formerly president of the Merchants and Miners 
 National Bank, etc., he is in for some shocks. For example, 
 the ether was rudely disturbed this morning when Uncle 
 Stanny remarked genially to Nell : — ■ 
 
 " ' You were in great luck, Nell, that your backwoods doctor 
 hadn't a jag when he cut into your topknot.' 
 
 "The Colonel's language is brutally expressive, you know. 
 
 "Nell flushed and turned away in contemptuous silence. 
 The Colonel continued, 'Well, any way he's done a good 
 job by you, little girl, and we'll see that he's paid for it, — 
 give him enough for a year's spree ! ' 
 
 "Then there was more talk of the fee by both Aunty and 
 the Colonel. Aunty and the Colonel are rather vulgar about 
 money matters. Aunty said she should wait until the doctor 
 sent in his bill, and if it was 'unreasonable,' should send him 
 back a check for five hundred dollars. 'Make it a thou- 
 sand,' the Colonel said; 'it would have cost you five times 
 that in the city!' It developed later that Nell has some 
 romantic notion of her own, wishes to present him with a 
 tract of this forest to include that Healing Spring he is so 
 
THE HEALER 59 
 
 fond of, and the northern end of the Lake up to the moun- 
 tains, — a kingdom ! It belongs to the lumber company, I 
 believe, and they are planning to cut there this winter. The 
 Colonel laughed at her, said she might have the Spring and 
 a hundred acres about it, 'enough for a doctor who lives 
 like a lumber jack in a log cabin.' 'You can take it from 
 my money,' she said loftily. 'Your mother's money,' the 
 Colonel corrected. These Goodnows are so excessively 
 bourgeois! . . . 
 
 "A great expedition is on foot, — the final flourish to our 
 adventmre. The Colonel has arranged it. We are to climb 
 Macatawa and camp at Elk Lake on the shoulder of the moun- 
 tain, where the choppers are at work. I suppose the Wild 
 One will be with us, though there is no love lost between him 
 and the Colonel, whom I gather he regards as the arch fiend 
 of civilization invading his wilderness. A bientot, V. C." 
 
VII 
 
 The last of the golden autumn days had come. About 
 the still waters of Lake Sanguishine the flaming trees had 
 faded to dull russets and yellows, and were now dying in 
 ashes. By day Macatawa was clothed in a royal purple, 
 and the morning of "the great expedition" a glittering 
 mantle of white covered its summit. Vera Councillor, 
 assisting in the careful lading of the canoes that were to take 
 the little party up the Lake, pointed to the hoary tip. 
 
 "First notice of winter!" she called cheerily to Mrs. 
 Goodnow. 
 
 "Yes — and time we were out of the woods. We'll be 
 snowed in next !" 
 
 She had pleasant visions of the Colonel's private car, 
 with its steam heat, its plush and nickel accessories of 
 civilization. 
 
 "Dr. Holden says that the winters are glorious," Vera 
 threw out mischievously, as she deftly packed caviare and 
 candy into the corners of the great hamper. 
 
 " Humph ! " Mrs. Goodnow commented, with a little 
 shiver. "He's welcome to his snow and ice." 
 
 "Nell seems to think she might like to try a winter in the 
 woods." 
 
 "Nell!" 
 
 There were many mixed emotions compressed in that one 
 word, — chiefly suspicion. "Vera, do you think — " 
 
 60 
 
THE HEALER 61 
 
 But she could not phrase the preposterous idea. 
 
 "What is the use of thinking, Aunty?" the young woman 
 remarked soothingly, but a sly smile crossed her face as she 
 bent to her task again. 
 
 "Is he going with you?" Mrs. Goodnow demanded. 
 "The Colonel didn't ask him." 
 
 "Nell did ! He said that he might join us at Elk Lake — 
 he has a patient or something to attend to first." 
 
 'We shall start the day after you return," was all the reply 
 that Mrs. Goodnow made. 
 
 The young woman's smile deepened. 
 
 For the moment the good lady's housekeeping instinct 
 overcame all others, and bustling about the huge hamper 
 and ordering her servants to fetch this and that she com- 
 pleted the elaborate preparations for the two days' trip. 
 Presently the Colonel came with the guide to get his precious 
 hamper. Round and rosy and altogether carnal, he lifted 
 the bag of bottles tenderly as one might a child. 
 
 "You didn't forget my cigars. Vera? . . . Where is 
 Nell ? " he called back. " It's time we were off ! " 
 
 And at last Nell appeared, having delayed the start a full 
 hour, — fresh from sleep and bath, humming an air, with 
 dancing eyes. Even the fat Colonel, fuming in the midst 
 of his multitudinous comforts, glanced approvingly at the 
 girl. 
 
 "Better than ever !" he exclaimed. 
 
 "How happy she seems !" Vera murmured to the mother. 
 
 "Yes," was the grudging admission. 
 
 There was in the girl an unseen fount of joy. Each of the 
 onlookers could recognize the fact, feel the radiating warmth 
 
62 THE HEALER 
 
 of her bubbling presence, but was puzzled to account for it 
 fully. She tossed her mother a kiss, flitted lightly down 
 the long steps to the landing, and disposed of the party so 
 that she and Vera might have a canoe to themselves, while 
 the Colonel and the guides struggled behind with the bulky 
 apparatus of comfort. She swept her paddle in long Ught 
 strokes, shooting the canoe deftly forward. 
 
 "What a day of days to be alive in !" she sang. 
 
 Her companion, following her swift stroke somewhat 
 stolidly, asked : — 
 
 "When do you expect him to join us ?" 
 
 "Who?" the girl inquired demurely. 
 
 "Oh, Nellie — Nellie !" her friend retorted. 
 
 This young woman with the keen eyes and the intelligent 
 smile was already savoring a possible drama of sex, — some 
 small part of which she might witness up there in the woods. 
 
 But when the party reached the shoulder of the mountain 
 where in a dimple of the folding hills a little lake lay like a 
 bowl of pellucid water, there was no one to greet them but 
 the squirrels, who were finishing their harvest. While the 
 Colonel went after game with one of the guides, the other 
 man helped the two young women make ready the rough 
 shanty for the night. If the girl was disappointed at not 
 finding her Wild One there, she made no sign, but with the 
 same joyous note in her voice prepared the bough beds, and 
 later toward evening climbed to the top of the mountain. 
 Looking out into the northern waste of forest, she remarked 
 merely, " There's nothing beyond ! " and turned her back 
 to gaze down on Sanguishine, — a distant black spot beneath 
 them, Her face became pensive. But neither then nor 
 
THE HEALER 63 
 
 later about the evening camp-fire could the teasing Vera 
 elicit a betraying spark of emotion. If the girl dallied with 
 love, she already had learned the woman's lesson of conceal- 
 ment. The name of the doctor did not cross her lips, nor 
 was his absence apparently noted. 
 
 While the Colonel in well-stuffed comfort lounged before 
 the great fire that was pouring a feathery stream of smoke 
 into the starlit sky, the young women made ready for the 
 night, chattering womanwise of all the irrelevant nothings 
 that come to feminine lips at this hour. The last thing Vera 
 remembered was the outline of a girlish figure in the cabin 
 doorway. Nell was observing the crystal night. Something 
 very Uke a sigh reached her ears. Once in the early 
 glimmer of dawn Vera opened her eyes and was conscious 
 of some one moving about in the dim light of the little cabin, 
 but she soon relapsed into deep slumber. 
 
 Yet much happened in that cold gray dawn, while the 
 Colonel was placidly snoring under his mountainous load 
 of blankets, and Vera, tucked beneath her furs, was dreaming 
 contentedly. . . . 
 
 What was it made the girl restless before dawn? When 
 she stole to the door she saw in the misty uncertain light the 
 figure of a man leaning over the dying camp-fire, nursing 
 it assiduously into flame. For a few moments she watched 
 the solitary figure crouched silently by the fire, and then 
 crept to him over the thick brown needles. The Wild 
 One looked up from his task, and in the ruddy light his 
 face seemed to her white, haggard. His hands trembled 
 with the chips they held. She divined a stress of mind that 
 
64 THE HEALER 
 
 she would assuage if she could. But she said nothing. For 
 a time they crouched together over the fire while the gray- 
 mist of the dawn enveloped the tall trees, the little lake, — 
 all the world. 
 
 He had been delayed, he told her at last, but that was not 
 all. He had been tortured by doubt whether he should 
 come, whether they two should sip further of that fiery 
 draught that was brewing for them. He looked at her 
 with miserable eyes of longing and struggle — she was so 
 fair, so slight, so tender ! She did not understand this man's 
 contest with himself to put aside the desire of his heart. 
 To her life was simple. . . . 
 
 As the uncertain light gained upon the enveloping mist, 
 he rose and motioned her to follow him into the wood. They 
 circled the little lake, stepping from stone to stone along its 
 rocky shore. When they were on the other side of the 
 water from the camp, he stopped. The bowl of the lake was 
 completely covered by the mist. There was the silence of 
 vast space about them. The shivering girl drew her blanket 
 round her more closely, waiting, her heart beating strangely. 
 Suddenly out of the gray mist came the head of a deer; it 
 bent and drank in the lake ; then another came, and another. 
 Out of the stillness a great bird rose and whirred aloft. 
 Here in the chill gray dawn the two watching by the lake 
 seemed part of the elemental life of the wilderness. . . . The 
 deer drank and departed. The vaporous atmosphere became 
 more diffused. Suddenly up out of the east a crimson band 
 shot through the mist, then another, and more slowly others. 
 
 It was the dawn ! 
 
 The man with folded arms stood watching the gathering 
 
THE HEALER 65 
 
 colors. The girl by his side breathed swiftly. In the silence 
 unbroken between them she might read his heart. The dawn 
 was hope, life — coming onwards, flooding full. 
 
 "How fast it comes !" she murmured. 
 
 It was crimson now, soon crossed with purple and azure, — 
 splendidly royal ! Beneath the light the man's haggard 
 face filled with blood, and his eyes burned. At the moment, 
 with common impulse, they turned to each other, she look- 
 ing up into his face, he taking her in his arms, kissing her 
 lips, there in the dawn. 
 
 She seemed to understand in the light of this dawn a thou- 
 sand things unknown before, — her uncertain heart, the 
 being of man, joy, hope, the wonder of living and strug- 
 gling, — the purpose of life. ... It was their dawn, sent 
 to light their life always, — the dawn of hope, the dawn of 
 power for him, the dawn of love for her. Her face lay still 
 upon his breast. . . . 
 
 Vera Councillor, yawningly awake at last in the cold air 
 of the morning, looked at the smiling lips of the girl, felt 
 the soft light in her eyes. 
 
 "She loves !" the woman said to herself instantly, with a 
 strange pang of envy. 
 
 The guides were busy about the camp-fire with breakfast, 
 and the Colonel came waddling from his dip in the lake, 
 puffing mightily. Not for them the wonder of that red, 
 red dawn over the forest and the mountain, in the heart of 
 man and woman ! 
 
VIII 
 
 He wrote her : "I am laying the foundation of our home, 
 stone upon stone, there where we stood on the rocky ledge 
 above the lake beyond the Healing Spring — a house of 
 stone built upon stone." Thus he wrote her as the December 
 winds began to blow frostily. And she, reading his words 
 propped luxuriously in her chair upon the deck of the Nile 
 steamer, felt her face suffuse with a sudden flush of color. 
 Dreamily she let the letter fall into her lap and with eyes fixed 
 upon the waste of Egyptian sand saw the gaunt figure of a 
 man, bent, his hands clasped about heavy stones, — slivers 
 of the granite ledges, building far off in the austere wilderness 
 a house of stone — for her! 
 
 The audacity of that announcement, the fervor of those 
 passionless words, — "stone upon stone" — for eternity! 
 Lapped in her comfort she had a sensuous joy in this picture 
 of the gaunt man building his habitation, — hers, too, he 
 said, — and her woman's heart thrilled with pride because 
 she had set in motion those footsteps from afar — the un- 
 appeased desire of her had done it, and the will to mould that 
 lay dormant in her. 
 
 She remembered well the spot, that sunny headland rimmed 
 with firs above the blue lake, where first the spirit had spoken 
 between them. How well she knew the steps that led to it, 
 — the sandy rim of beach, the dark glade with its deserted 
 
 66 
 
THE HEALER 67 
 
 cabins, the green pool of steaming water, the hermit's rock, 
 and above all the rock shelf open to the mountains and the 
 lake. Out of the dark -place of old sickness and healing her 
 Healer had led the way up the steep path to the rocky plat- 
 form and there at the very spot where her feet had stood he 
 was building his tabernacle of love. In her heart was a 
 woman's sweet triumph in the force of this worship. . . . 
 
 His kiss still burned upon her lips, and she saw him as 
 they had parted at the dawni before the flaming colors of the 
 eastern sky, upon the mountain. The dawn that was to 
 be for them both the beginning of life, the realization of 
 unknown wonders ! He had left her in the beauty of that 
 dawn, disappeared into the wilderness, and she had not 
 looked for him on the morrow when they had departed. That 
 gray November morning, with the first chill snowflakes in 
 the air, she did not expect him then. Something had told 
 her that he would not come again until he was full master 
 of himself, ready to take her up to the heights with him. 
 So she had smiled when her mother grumbled at his " lack 
 of breeding," and the Colonel made his rough jokes, and Vera 
 examined her furtively. As the boat put out for the Settle- 
 ment she had looked back to the headland above the Healing 
 Spring. Was it the lonely figure of a man she saw there, 
 standing motionless among the firs ? . . . Her kiss was on 
 his lips — she left him that gage. Now she waited. 
 
 Other letters continued the sweet story, linking her close 
 during all her wandering to the little stone house, from its 
 foundation course to the pitch of its roof timber. It lay 
 east by west, one face to the northern breast of hills — just 
 as she had stood that time — the other open to the sun, 
 
68 THE HEALER 
 
 which would fall softly across the encircling firs. There 
 was a sheltered spot beyond the house for a flower garden, 
 did she remember? A tiny place, rock-ribbed, for which 
 the earth must be brought. 
 
 There were many gusty, gloomy days, — a bitter Decem- 
 ber, during which the stone walls rose slowly, — now a hearty 
 stroke of work, then a slackening of effort, as if the building 
 kept pace with a restless will. The sills and traverses, all 
 of old weathered oak, were got to their place with much 
 difficulty. Then there were notes of a great fireplace, a 
 solid breast of rock completely filling one end of the main 
 room, from whose cavernous depths the house must be 
 warmed. Also a broad oak door, low so that a man must 
 bend his head on entering, but hospitably wide, — this she 
 learned at Khartoum beside the golf course. 
 
 Again he wrote of interruptions in the work, days when 
 no stone was put in its place, no beam raised. But these 
 delays were of a professional nature. "There is much sick- 
 ness among the lumber camps — they send for me often." 
 After this a long silence until the girl, travelling hither 
 and thither, became uneasy, feared the loss of letters gone 
 astray on her whirling path, — or worse ! At last, — 
 she had reached the smiling slopes of Sicily, — a letter with 
 the bold Sanguishine postmark made her heart leap. There 
 had been an attack of smallpox in one of the upper camps, 
 and her lover had been isolated, — could not send even a 
 letter. But now it was over — a number of deaths, poor 
 devils ! — and he was back once more at the stone house, 
 reckoning this time to complete it without interruption. . . . 
 Now there came for him in the midst of the deep snows a 
 
THE HEALER 69 
 
 space of sunny stillness and calm. The building went fast, 
 — the walls were up level and ready for the roof beams. . . . 
 Sitting in the languorous Sicilian garden, heavy with sweet 
 scents and droning bees, she pictured the Wild One clothed 
 in his rough sheepskin, with the thick woollen leggings of 
 the lumbermen pulled over his moccasins, and heavy hide 
 gloves on his hands. She saw him ferreting out the stones 
 and bits of timber from their snowy bed, placing them 
 carefully piece by piece firm in the walls of the stone house. 
 The girl's heart beat strangely. . . . 
 
 And then a week's puzzling silence. The building had 
 tarried, for no expressed reason. He wrote feverishly of 
 terrible cold, of frosty nights and ghttering stars in a black 
 heaven. He had returned to that lonely cabin in the distant 
 valley, — the place he would never take her to see ; she 
 divined that old enemies have been on his trail, like hungry 
 wolves, hunting him down in his loneliness and longing. 
 Her heart cries out to be with him; nevertheless her 
 woman's sense fast growing tells her that these enemies 
 on his trail he must fight off single-handed if he would emerge 
 triumphant, — her Healer ! It was for that he had stayed 
 in the wilderness — to best those devouring wolves within 
 him. He will fight them down, — lassitudes, appetites, 
 slackening will — all ! 
 
 As if in response to her faith, once more rose triumphant the 
 song of the stone house, — their house, he calls it, — and she 
 smiles. He has returned to the Healing Spring, taking with 
 him old Gray Jack, his servant, — a cast-off army cook, rover, 
 drunken child of the wilderness whom he has saved from a 
 miserable grave. They have established themselves in one 
 
70 THE HEALER 
 
 of the old cabins half buried under the winter's snowbank, 
 — he will not return to the dark valley, where he has been 
 eaten by the wolves, but will camp near the stone house. 
 And the song of the house rises triumphantly again. 
 
 Dimly it appears to her woman's heart that this Wild 
 One of hers is building into those stone walls not merely their 
 love : he is building up his will, his manhood, — purpose, 
 the hope blazoned in that last dawn upon the mountains. 
 She cannot fully understand what it means, bewildered as 
 she is by the social flutter of her wandering life, confusing 
 voices all about, possible lovers, idlers, Vera's young diplomat, 
 who has latterly appeared, her mother, all the complex 
 triviality of her leisured life. She cannot wholly compre- 
 hend this fury of spiritual struggle afar off there in the grim 
 north, in the forest choked with snow, this strong man's 
 fight with tense muscle for something beyond his grasp, for 
 possession, not of her, but of himself. 
 
 "The stones are set in blood," he said once darkly, "and 
 light streams on it from a crimson sky ! " an illusion she sus- 
 pects to the wolves on his track or perhaps to the dawn when 
 they came together. It is a pretty fancy, and her cheeks 
 flame at the thought of the worship in it. Did ever woman 
 have lover hke that ? Alone that night in her chamber she 
 looked out upon the Sicilian hill dotted with little gray 
 stone houses, and wondered if theirs was to be like them. 
 No — more spacious, rising amply from the rocky platform 
 among the firs, the proud home of her lord ! She slept 
 with a smile upon her pretty lips at the thought, and in the 
 morning, when the flower girl came singing down the sunlit 
 street, she wrote to him : — 
 
THE HEALER 71 
 
 " I am so eager to see your stone house, — can't you send 
 me a little picture of it ? " 
 
 As if he had not sent her many a glowing picture of the 
 temple he was building for her! The reply came to her in 
 Rome, whither the party, now swollen to unmanageable 
 confusion, had drifted. "Look in your heart, my beloved," 
 he wrote with a tone of faint disappointment, "and there 
 you must find the living picture of it all." How could she 
 study her heart, with all the scurrying to and fro in motors, 
 the endless chatter of drawing-rooms, the procession of 
 faces expecting something from her? She did not answer. 
 Then a luminous moment came to her, in the silence of 
 an empty old temple. He was building his will, himself for 
 her, making the temple of his purpose clean and large, fit for 
 her, his heart of hearts to lie safely within. She knelt 
 there and listened, in the empty temple, with a prayer 
 struggling upwards in her heart. Afterwards for a little 
 time she drew apart from the others, refused excursions, 
 snubbed the dangling young men. 
 
 "Romantic mood," Vera Councillor dubbed it, having 
 noted the thick letters with the black Sanguishine post mark. 
 She had her own dallying with fate these days, being dis- 
 cretely courted by a young diplomat, good to look at, urbane 
 of manner, with an experienced air, an important eye-glass. 
 She talked profoundly of the Balkan situation, also of po- 
 litical prospects in the home country, all of which rendered 
 Mrs. Goodnow jealous. The Councillors had more money 
 than the Goodnows, she admitted, but Vera was inferior 
 to her own Nell in woman's chiefest weapon. Why not 
 her daughter, with a courting diplomat ? She spoke to the 
 
72 THE HEALER 
 
 girl bluntly, but got little satisfaction. Yet the temple 
 mood wore off presently, as it must with the young, and the 
 girl went riding over the campagna with one Bertie Scales, 
 who had passed the maternal scrutiny. 
 
 Thus the winter of wandering slipped away, in Italian 
 haunts, along the Riviera, and April found the party at Aix 
 to be rested and cured of their ailments. Here the usual 
 thick letter was waiting her, — the one she thrust into her 
 bosom secretively and read alone, quite alone, in her chamber. 
 
 The house of stone, now roofed in, covered with a mantle 
 of snow, was slowly nearing completion. Her special room, 
 — the chamber to the east at the edge of the rock, — 
 was now the subject. There had been heavy snows, and 
 more sickness in the wilderness. He was forced to make 
 long journeys, an entire day over the ice in a sleigh, or 
 ten miles on stout snow-shoes, to look after some woodsman 
 tossing in fever in a squalid bunk house. Some of these 
 patients needed more attention than he could give them 
 in their lonely cabins. He spoke of bringing them to the 
 Spring, when they were strong enough to be moved. Old 
 Gray Jack would help him look after them, and the deserted 
 cabins could be made comfortable enough. She might see 
 the pushing forward of an idea in his mind, — the one he 
 had mentioned to her when they stood about the Spring, — 
 a plan of gathering his rough patients about him where he 
 could give them more attention, somewhat better quarters, 
 bring them back more surely to health. 
 
 There were traces of pride over his labors in the letters, — 
 the creator's triumph in the work of his hand. "They will 
 make me go, get me out at all hours. ... I have been 
 
THE HEALER 73 
 
 forced to send for more medical supplies. You will find a 
 busy hospital beneath your home !" No, not that, she said 
 thoughtfully. He should not waste himself on a few half 
 savage lumber jacks, sewing up cuts, medicining fevers and 
 the like, common task of ordinary men. Yet she was prouder 
 of her lover's gift than Vera of her diplomat's subtle analysis 
 of the Balkan situation. Her hero had found himself, she 
 thought, and she saw him swiftly emerging from the forest, 
 his fame quickly radiating over great cities, across the seas. 
 
 "I've pitched my tepee in the shelter of the stone house," 
 he wrote, " where the garden will be some day. It was lone- 
 lier down below in the cabin with Gray Jack." 
 
 He would not enter their house before the day ! That 
 day when they two would bow their heads beneath the low 
 lintel and enter it together. The girl's still eyes grew misty. 
 She spoke to her mother of their return, — "not wishing 
 always to be wandering about Europe," — and the difficult 
 old woman acquiesced, secretly pining for her own suburban 
 ease. The date was set for the sailing, and she wrote it 
 to him. . . . 
 
 "He is lonely," she said to herself, with a yearning that 
 made her restless. She saw him bound in his little tent 
 through the smothering week-long storms, prey to the furies 
 that had gnawed him. She saw him pale and gaunt, and she 
 felt within herself the soothing power, the touch of balm. 
 At this point she essayed to put into halting words something 
 of the vague emotions that throbbed in her. 
 
 "I can see the great frozen woods," she wrote, "the sun- 
 light on the snow, and the drifting storms, and you on your 
 way to the sick through them. It is good to think that you 
 
74 THE HEALER 
 
 are wanted, can help people. Do they realize what a wonder- 
 ful doctor they have ? But it is too lonely — it makes me 
 sad to think of you in that loneliness and your great gift 
 so thrown away as it must be up there! " 
 
 Back came the reply, with unexpected despatch, as though 
 two mighty sea-monsters had conspired to exchange the 
 thoughts of these lovers. 
 
 "Lonely!" He repudiated the accusation with the ring 
 of victory. "The wilderness all about me is peopled, — with 
 you ! How could it be lonely?" 
 
 A smile rose unconsciously to her lips, and her breath 
 fluttered, as if a strong man had her in his grasp and was 
 bearing her aloft in his uplifting sweep. "My days are full 
 of effort, my nights are full of dream of you !" Ah, the 
 lover! "The darker moments pass if I but think of you. 
 You have conquered ! . . . The house is nearly ready for 
 its mistress. And I, too, am ready. . . . Yes, I shall go 
 once, but once only, to the city." 
 
 Which being interpreted as the girl could interpret it, 
 meant that the long winter's trial was finished : a man was 
 made as well as a house of stone, the dark bondage broken, 
 his will built solid like the walls of rock, and now his heart 
 rioted to claim its reward. But what was that casual refer- 
 ence "once and but once only to the city"? 
 
 The girl's face grew serious as she read on in the murky 
 light of the London hotel. 
 
 "Don't say that these people are not worthy of my gift. 
 They are flesh and blood, and from the city hospital to the 
 comfortable homes of Suburbia humanity is the same — 
 under the knife, on the bed of sickness." 
 
THE HEALER 75 
 
 She did not give much heed to this extravagant statement, 
 her attention being caught by what followed : — 
 
 " It is almost the end of our long winter, — the last clear, 
 glittering days of snow. Already the sun is too high, stays 
 up too long to make good footing for the trail. The sun has 
 swung southwards until it floods the broad doorway of the 
 house at noon. To-day the air is positively soft, with south- 
 erly whisperings, such as you must be breathing. Soon the 
 streams will begin to trickle beneath the snows. Spring 
 sweeps up here at a bound. So, just these few days of wait- 
 ing, brooding before the spring, as I wait for you ! . . . 
 You will find some sad changes. They have cut great gashes 
 on the flanks of Macatawa, — ghastly wounds, — and from 
 them the blood of the forest has been drained to make print 
 paper for the millions. But the forest will grow again some 
 day, and they cannot butcher about the Healing Spring, nor 
 here around the stone house. It waits for its mistress. 
 Come !" 
 
 Was ever lover more imperious? She saw his bold pur- 
 pose, and as she came to the end of the letter it made her 
 grave. For a long time she sat motionless, thinking, trying 
 to envisage the dark future, — their future. 
 
 Hitherto it had all been in the cloudland of romance and 
 worship. His words had thrilled her. What stirred most 
 was the sense of his worship, of being so much to one so 
 powerful, her great Healer, as she felt him to be. She did 
 not understand this influence of hers. It was a theme of 
 poets, often proclaimed. But here it touched her close : 
 she was the star that hung like a beacon in his heavens to 
 guide him from hell back to earth and on to heaven. The 
 
76 THE HEALER 
 
 house of stone upon the granite ledge was but a symbol, a 
 poem, — a temple he had raised in her honor, a shrine also 
 to hold her. It was sweet, the lover's language and his 
 ardent worship : it wafted her, too, heavenwards. She 
 doubted if the young diplomat could give such sensation to 
 Vera. . . . But now, fast coming towards her, was some- 
 thing else — life. And the woman in her must rise to meet 
 it, — not a matter of glowing words, but a far-reaching deci- 
 sion. 
 
 ■■ Of that she pondered gravely all the long days crossing 
 the seas. She must now meet her fate and answer. One 
 awaited her out there beyond the sea, — a gaunt man with 
 hungry eyes. Already, masterlike, he had taken full pos- 
 session of her soul. 
 
IX 
 
 Instead of the Wild One from the north, however, it was 
 the Colonel, who stood firm planted upon the dock to wel- 
 come her^ — the Colonel, large and busy and prosperous. 
 Behind him was Dr. Percy, — dark and dapper, with a broad 
 smile of welcome. It was the familiar bustle of home coming, 
 — flowers, letters, telegrams, chatter. Mrs. Goodnow and 
 the Colonel became immediately involved in a lively alterca- 
 tion with the inspectors over the Goodnow trunks, and angrily 
 denounced the law of their land, which had made them and 
 their prosperous kind what they were. 
 
 "Yes, I'm glad to be home, of course," she was saying to 
 Dr. Percy, " and perfectly well ! Pleasant voyage, but I'm 
 tired of gadding about." Her eyes were roving among the 
 crowd of strange faces, searching for something, — some one. 
 "I wrote him the day," her heart murmured. 
 
 And when they were finally off, tucked up in the Colonel's 
 new car, threading swiftly through the crowded streets 
 towards that large trim home in Suburbia, her eyes looked 
 this way and that as if in search of a gaunt man with the 
 air of the woods about him. . . . 
 
 "I hope John drives carefully — the trafiic gets worse 
 all the time," Mrs. Goodnow complained. 
 
 Vera, who had just parted from her young diplomat, 
 their negotiations almost concluded, smiled at Nell's troubled 
 
 77 
 
78 THE HEALER 
 
 young eyes and sombre face. She said lightly to the timid 
 lady: — 
 
 "You know, dear aunt, we are as near heaven in a motor 
 on Broadway — " 
 
 "I wrote him he might come," the girl's heart kept saying, 
 " and not a word, not a flower !" 
 
 Suddenly the girl leaned forward, and in the clear sky of 
 family chatter, she said earnestly, placing her little hand on 
 the Colonel's plump knees : — 
 
 "Why do you cut off all the woods?" 
 
 "What — where?" the fat man stammered. 
 
 "At Sanguishine, of course ! All that lovely forest about 
 the mountain." 
 
 "How did you know about that?" her mother demanded 
 suspiciously. 
 
 Vera pressed the girl's arm. 
 
 But the president of the Northern Pulp Company laughed 
 good-humoredly, and replied in ready metaphor. Taking 
 a bit of dainty lace from the girl's gown between his chubby 
 fingers, he held it up. 
 
 "Why, to make money for this!" 
 
 "It isn't necessary," the girl said vaguely, thinking, 
 "He might have sent one little flower !" 
 
 "I don't see why it troubles you," Mrs. Goodnow remarked 
 severely. 
 
 The Colonel developed lyrically the theme of material 
 expansion. The pulp company was paying thirty per cent 
 dividends, he remarked casually. He pointed dramatically 
 to a newsboy on the corner with a bundle of papers under 
 bis arm. 
 
THE HEALER 79 
 
 "We must have paper !" he said oracularly. 
 
 Then he turned to his sister. 
 
 "Myra, you should get rid of your horses and buy a car 
 instead. Nobody keeps a carriage these days." 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow, true conservative, resisted stoutly what 
 she knew was inevitable. 
 
 Thus the family party rolled on through the great city 
 out to their comfortable mansion in Suburbia. A fully 
 perceptive glance at that castle of comfort would reveal 
 not merely the Goodnows, but the soul of a nation as 
 well. Of good red brick, with many shining windows, broad 
 and ample it sat in a shaven lawn, with barbered hedges 
 protecting it from the dust of the highway. A gravelled 
 drive, as neatly brushed each day as the drawing-room floor, 
 wound in a tortured curve from the gate through nea;t shrubs 
 and flower beds to the broad veranda. The interior demands 
 the pen of a real estate agent or new man-milliner, — with 
 its fourteen masters' rooms, ten baths, and ample dressing 
 rooms, its mahogany, waxed floor, tiled and fireplaced rooms, 
 its music and drawing-rooms, hall and library and recep- 
 tion rooms, its telephones and tempered heat, its spotless 
 order and cleanliness, — in one word comfort ! The goddess 
 of comfort was completely installed in this mansion of the 
 Goodnows, ruling in her realm of Suburbia-Philistina. . . . 
 
 As the car, scattering little spurts of gravel from its great 
 wheels, rolled to the door, the girl gave an involuntary sigh. 
 It was home, the place where she would be, and yet it seemed 
 to stretch out heavy hands to take her soul into bondage. 
 She lingered in the hall while her mother trotted excitedly 
 about the rooms, sniffing out possible disarrangements in 
 
80 THE HEALER 
 
 her domain and giving sharp orders to her maids. The 
 scent of the cut flowers in the vases, the modulated chimes 
 of the clocks, the soft pervasive heat, the riotous sunshine 
 of the sunny rooms, the inviting depths of padded chairs, 
 the soft rugs, the apathetic emptiness of the great house, 
 filled the girl with strange dissatisfaction. It was the sodden 
 hand rf comfort reaching out to her young spirit, the 
 double-damned respectability of Suburbia-Philistina that 
 was speaking, hailing her relentlessly from those glittering 
 heights of romance where she had latterly been dwelling. 
 
 " If he had only sent a little flower." . . . 
 
 In a few days, nay hours, she must sink once more into the 
 family atmosphere, as the rock sinks into the mass of tar, 
 to continue the flourishing tradition of the Goodnows into 
 another generation. 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow, still rustling in the spangled black of her 
 travelling clothes, turned over the accumulated mail on the 
 hall table. 
 
 "What's this ? " she demanded, holding up a white envelope 
 with the unequivocal stamp of Sanguishine. Through her 
 new lorgnette she studied the free scrawl of the address. The 
 girl swiftly claimed her letter. 
 
 "Mine, please!" 
 
 "Oh, from the Wild One?" Vera inquired maliciously. 
 
 "Has He been writing you?" the mother asked. 
 
 The girl was already beyond sound of human voice. 
 
 "I don't see why he should write you. ... I wonder 
 why he hasn't sent in his bill ! " 
 
 "Perhaps he'll come and present it in person," Vera sug- 
 gested with her fine little smile. 
 
THE HEALER 81 
 
 Nell with the captured letter had fled up the broad stair- 
 case to the secrecy of her room, where behind double doors 
 she could devour the sheets. Not a word of greeting ! As 
 if she had not come three thousand miles nearer his wilder- 
 ness, — was scarcely a two days' journey south of him ! 
 No excuse for his absence ! The color flushed her cheeks as 
 she read on. Girl — woman — what are miles, three thou- 
 sand or less to love such as his ? Had he not, with passion's 
 magic, kept her there close at his side these long winter 
 months of waiting ? 
 
 With growing impatience she read more details of 
 that house of stone, which he was finishing now with all a 
 lover's tender care. Fantastic ! He had made himself 
 carpenter in order that every touch might be wholly his. 
 She would find it rude, no doubt, — he was no cabinet-maker 
 by trade, too impatient even to be a good carpenter. Never- 
 theless, it was honestly built, of seasoned stuff, and solid 
 as the eternal rock beneath. 
 
 As if he could compete with the carpentry of Suburbia — 
 her heart was sick of building. 
 
 There was an air of masterly calm in these words, as 
 though they were spoken by a man of accomplished will, 
 who at last has found his mooring and anchored himself 
 thereto forever. She might picture him up there in the 
 first warmth of the northern spring, going to and fro within 
 the little house, — hammering, sawing, contriving an im- 
 mense settle to stand before the fire, covering it with the 
 hide of a deer, — busy with eye and hand. The winter 
 had fairly gone, he wrote, leaving irregular patches 
 of yellowing snow-drift on the hillsides, like ornaments of 
 
82 THE HEALER 
 
 old ivory. The streams were babbling loudly. The hills 
 gleamed with water and sang musically. The south wind, 
 drawing through the thick forest, brought the scent of balsam, 
 cedars, firs, pines, spruce, — an aromatic feast. 
 
 Pleasant words, but of slight substance to stay her hungry 
 heart ! 
 
 Then more about the sick in the cabins near the Heal- 
 ing Spring. As he had told her before, he had brought thither 
 some of the feebler, who could not struggle to health all 
 alone in their rough quarters. Latterly a woman, — a poor 
 creature, whom he had discovered in utter misery at the 
 camp of some hunters, — had given him much concern. "I 
 thought she must die when first I found her — sport of fate 
 and man, wretched and hopeless. But I have persuaded 
 her that she can live — she is gaining slowly." And half 
 humorously he commented, "So you see I have started 
 my hospital already, with this waif, and my old Gray Jack 
 for helper. We will make the Spring do miracles once more." 
 
 It was that which had kept him from her, — this woman- 
 creature in her woe. The girl knew it instinctively, and 
 resented it with strange passion. That any one could keep 
 her lover from her, man or woman, in distress or peace, — it 
 was an unforgivable insult ! With a long-drawn sigh and com- 
 pressed lips, she dropped the letter into a deep drawer, filled 
 with scented feminine fabrics, then gazed at herself in the 
 glass, as if she would see emerge there a new person, quite 
 free from all trace of insanity. She tilted her hat this way 
 and that, evoking thus that new, perfectly sensible self, 
 who was to take the place of the mad, wilful creature that 
 had rioted in her flesh these past months. 
 
THE HEALER 83 
 
 Let him have his sick and his HeaUng Spring, his wretched 
 waifs, and his stone hut ! 
 
 "Marie !" she called to the maid. "Venez vite \" 
 " Oui, mademoiselle. Mademoiselle va sortir ? " 
 The telephone tinkled, a friend was calling. May or 
 Adelaide or Josephine — what mattered it? The hand of 
 the gay, easy little suburban world she had always known 
 was reaching out to her. Luncheon, then dinner, the 
 play, the opera, incursions into the city; long luxurious 
 hours in her soft bed, with Marie and the breakfast awaiting 
 her sleepy awakening, — all as it had been, as it was for a 
 thousand thousands and more throughout the broad level 
 land of Philistia-Americana. The crowded, trivial, chatter- 
 ing days, full of important nothings, — Life ! Yes, why 
 not ? Life as it was for the thousand thousands and more 
 who Uve in the comfortable mansions of Suburbia. . . . 
 
 She could not comprehend that these sick waifs he tarried 
 to heal, for whose sake he put off love itself, like the 
 stones of his little house were but offerings of love to her, — 
 the ritual of his worship to that divine one he had made and 
 set up, idol-wise, in his heart. For man is the poet, dreamer 
 ever, half God, half beast, — ready to worship or wallow, 
 transfiguring the human woman, like this girl, into the divin- 
 ity of his dreams. While he cured the sick woman and 
 adored the image he had made for himself, the girl was put- 
 ting on a new gown of dazzling fashion. 
 Another "affair" safely ended, was the judgment of Vera. 
 
 Then He appeared, was there before her eyes in flesh, 
 upon the pebbled drive. She had knelt to disentangle a 
 
84 THE HEALER 
 
 hyacinth whose head was buried in the damp mould when she 
 heard his vigorous step. Rising, she paled. Her knees 
 trembled, and her hands felt like ice. 
 
 His eyes devoured her, — those eyes that read beneath 
 the skin. Taking her hands in his warm grip he held them 
 for a moment, then frowned. 
 
 "Why are you pale and cold?" he demanded. "Aren't 
 you well?" 
 
 Pushing back the curling brown hair that hid his dreadful 
 handiwork, he looked critically at her, muttering : — 
 
 "Why do you tremble hke that?" 
 
 "I suppose," her lips quivered between sob and smile, — 
 "I was startled!" 
 
 Her color came back in a flame, and the smile triumphed. 
 His stern face broke into tenderness and yearning. She 
 understood that he could not have come before, not until 
 that minute, indeed ! She looked furtively at him. 
 
 He seemed no longer gaunt, — lean and hard rather, like 
 the well-worked man, — and in place of the pallor was 
 the healthily tanned skin of one who had lived altogether 
 in the open and taken on his flesh both storm and sunshine. 
 
 "Your home is ready !" he whispered, and like a musical 
 refrain of infinite meaning, "the house of stone built upon 
 stone!" 
 
 "So you wrote," she replied evasively, turning towards 
 the large brick mansion. 
 
 He looked at the imposing structure with knitted brows, 
 then broke into whimsical laughter. 
 
 "Is that where you live ?" he demanded with rude irony. 
 
 "Yes," the girl admitted; "and why not?" 
 
THE HEALER 85 
 
 It was considered in Suburbia a fine and dignified residence, 
 in fact an architectural triumph and more — a certificate of 
 character. With its ample breadth and sohd seat, its gleam- 
 ing, fluffily curtained windows, and shaded verandas, its 
 flower beds a,nd gravel walks, it seemed to look down 
 coldly upon the stranger, and resent his rude criticism of 
 its dignity. 
 
 He stared back at the house, glanced over the shaven lawn 
 from which a gardener was extracting the weeds, at the gravel 
 drive where another servant was erasing the last marks of 
 wheels, then back at the girl, speculatively. 
 
 "So that's where you live !" 
 
 "Yes," she said uneasily, "for the last ten years." 
 
 She suddenly became aware of her hero's bizarre unfitness 
 for the place. He had discarded his mackinaw and mocca- 
 sins, to be sure ; but rough homespun, heavy boots, and 
 broad-brimmed felt hat scarcely equipped him for Suburbia. 
 Her mind swiftly compared his appearance with that of 
 Dr. Percy, of the promising Diplomat, and of Youth various, 
 who frequented her world, — all smart and sleek like the 
 lawn and the bushes. 
 
 "'Tis a wonder for the gods !" the Wild One murmured, 
 glancing from the girl to the house. 
 
 "I'll show you the place," she said with a blush, instinc- 
 tively contriving to put off that shock of contact which 
 must come when her mother and the Wild One met again. 
 
 So she took him through the pergola, down the formal gar- 
 den with its Lilliputian art, by the Italian well-head (and 
 empty well), to the kitchen garden. They came back past 
 the stables and the greenhouses to a marble seat before the 
 
86 THE HEALER 
 
 waterless well. The doctor sat on the well-head and drummed 
 with his knuckles on the empty bucket. 
 
 "It's like a play house," he remarked, and then musingly 
 he repeated: — 
 
 " Your home is ready, — has been for a month. But that 
 woman kept me. She's been trying to die. I've just per- 
 suaded her she can't." 
 
 "You have had much sickness in the woods this winter," 
 she remarked. 
 
 "There were a couple of hundred choppers up there, and 
 the smallpox got in. The company took no care of the men. 
 The officers should be shut up in a pest-house themselves ! " 
 
 She thought of the fat Colonel with his lyric praise of 
 pulp and material development shut up in a pest-house, and 
 laughed lightly. 
 
 "But the season's over, thank God, and the lumber crews 
 have gone out with the cut. . . . And I've come for you !" 
 he concluded casually. 
 
 "I should think you'd rather work in the city, like other 
 doctors," she suggested demurely. 
 
 "Here?" he queried with another explosion of ironic 
 laughter. "Set up my shop here and peddle pills and 
 twaddle?" 
 
 "There are very good doctors in the city." 
 
 "I know — I spent the morning at the hospital with Jenks 
 and Savage. I brought down a case for them to try their 
 hands on. . . . I went over the whole place, like old times. 
 . . . It's too much of a trade like any other, — like butcher- 
 ing or stock selling. . . . Wholesale, you know. . . . Why, 
 they tell me Jenks makes his fifty thousand a year !" 
 
THE HEALER 87 
 
 "Does he?" she asked quickly, thinking of arguments for 
 her mother and the Colonel. 
 
 "No man can do that who cares," he replied, shaking his 
 head. He slipped from his perch as if he were impatient for 
 her answer to the main question. 
 
 "I'll show you the greenhouses: we have some lovely 
 roses," she said in haste. 
 
 So they inspected the greenhouses and the hothouses, 
 the forcing beds and the flower garden. Then they wan- 
 dered up the road between other remarkable specimens of 
 Suburbia, set among smug green lawns, — mile after mile of 
 orderly comfort, with the city smoking gloomily upon the 
 distant horizon. 
 
 The unfamiliar atmosphere seemed to estrange them. 
 They talked in subdued tones of nothing, she pointing 
 out the monuments of the place and he examining all 
 with ironical eyes. Then he spoke of his solitary winter 
 fastness, the slaughter of the forest, the ignorant men whom 
 he served there in the wilderness. He told her of his old Gray 
 Jack, the drunken camp cook, and she could read in his care- 
 less words a lust for conquests, — sparkle of youth, — which 
 made him work over his poor half-breeds. The sick were 
 his field of battle, where he did prodigies of skill. To mould 
 sick humanity, not merely dose men and women on their sick 
 beds, — that was the large vague aim within him. 
 
 "They'll think it's the Spring," he said humorously, "when 
 they get well — perhaps it is!" 
 
 She listened admiringly to his talk, but her thought was 
 fluttering elsewhere. 
 
 "What gives you the power?" she asked, 
 
88 THE HEALER 
 
 He was silent, with moody eyes. 
 
 "You could do so much good in the city," she suggested 
 deftly. 
 
 "One cannot heal in the city," he answered; "too many 
 traders, too much reward !" 
 
 He waved a scornful hand over the smiling landscape of 
 Suburbia, and dismissed it. 
 
 At last they came back to the Goodnow place and entered 
 the house. Mrs. Goodnow, who was reading a book before 
 a cheerful fire when her daughter said, "Mother, the doctor 
 has come to see us," pretended that she did not recognize 
 the stranger. 
 
 "Doctor?" she inquired. Then she gave him a nod. 
 "So you have come to the city?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes," he rephed quickly, "I have come to the city." 
 He paused, while his eyes sought the girl's, then as if re- 
 assured, continued, "I have come for your daughter." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I have come to take your daughter back with me," he 
 said more plainly. 
 
 "What — " the lady gasped. 
 
 "I think he means to marry me, mother," the girl explained. 
 
 "Marry my daughter !" The old woman's tone of horror 
 expressed the philosophy of a race. 
 
 Thus the cataclysm burst. 
 
X 
 
 What the mother said was of no importance, abusive and 
 angry as it was. The Wild One shrugged his shoulders, and 
 with a slight smile looked over the domestic landscape of 
 padded chairs and soft rugs, waiting. When he had suffi- 
 ciently absorbed the interior, as he had before the exterior, 
 he spoke in response to the final objurgation, "You must 
 have lost your senses !" 
 
 "I think," he said calmly, "your daughter will decide 
 this matter for herself." 
 
 His grave eyes sought the girl, who was standing beside 
 the fireplace. She turned, and going up to her mother gave 
 her a slight caress. Then she spoke gently, as she had done 
 that other time when her life lay in the decision: — 
 
 "Mother, I shall go with him, wherever he wants." 
 
 The storm burst afresh, raging back and forth from the 
 man to the girl. They stood apart silently, and the mother's 
 tones gradually weakened, as if she remembered that other 
 time when the woman in her daughter had first emerged from 
 the girl, and with clearer will than hers had won the case. 
 But this time the mother was giving battle on her own ground, 
 with all the appurtenances of tradition and civilized Suburbia 
 at her command to awe and subdue the enemy. That other 
 time she had been helpless in the wilderness, without tele- 
 phone or telegraph. 
 
 89 
 
90 THE HEALER 
 
 "Mother," the girl said evenly, "it's no use — I must do 
 it!" 
 
 "We shall see," she stormed. "I will telephone your 
 uncle !" 
 
 At the words the crunch of a heavy car on the gravel drive 
 could be heard, and a burly figure burst into the hall, and 
 puffingly threw off fur coat and goggled hat. The Colonel 
 entered at the dramatic moment. His fat red face shone 
 with blustering good health as he came forward into the 
 light; he blinked at the stranger standing before the fire. 
 
 "Doctor — doctor," he stammered as though he were 
 saying to himself, "the dope-fiend, by God ! What the 
 devil is his name ? " 
 
 The Wild One straightened himself and drew his hands 
 from the pockets of his baggy trousers. 
 
 "Well, well, just from the woods ? How are things at the 
 Lake?" 
 
 " Good enough from the lumber company's point of view," 
 the doctor observed nonchalantly. 
 
 "We did make a good cut." 
 
 "Why don't you look after your men up there? That 
 smallpox was a serious matter this winter." 
 
 " What ? " the Colonel grunted sourly. " It isn't our affair ; 
 it's the contractor's." 
 
 " So I suppose ! " 
 
 "This fellow," Mrs. Goodnow burst forth, "has the im- 
 pudence to walk in here and demand Nell ! " 
 
 "Come, now — what?" the Colonel roared. 
 
 "Not demand," the girl corrected with her little smile, 
 half humorous. " I think he wants to marry me, uncle." 
 
THE HEALER 91 
 
 "What!" 
 
 "And I shall do it." 
 
 A second time the cataclysm burst with renewed force: 
 its effect had best be told in the words of Vera Councillor, 
 who arriving at this juncture to keep a luncheon engagement 
 found the whirlwind at its height. 
 
 "It seems," so Vera confided to her discreet young dip- 
 lomat, "that our simple little Nell had quietly been corre- 
 sponding with that wild doctor of hers all the time we were 
 abroad — at least he wrote her constantly and she must have 
 made some sort of reply. I suspected it occasionally, but 
 supposed it was merely the aftermath of a romance. She's 
 never seemed to me to be the sort of girl who could sustain 
 romance like that. Will she ? That is the terrible question 
 now agitating the Goodnow household — and me. Of course 
 they have done their idiotic best to commit her for good and 
 all to her romance. . . . 
 
 "Last Friday He arrived on the scene, unannounced I 
 take it, — and in appearance much the same backwoods 
 genius in spite of his attempt at city dress. Yet he looked 
 'big' even in Aunty's drawing-room — you know I always 
 admired him. And I thought he had a new note in him, — 
 a sort of calm yet fiery will. He certainly had himself in 
 hand and made the best impression of all. ... It seems he 
 and Nell had met earUer and had been walking around for 
 hours before she dared bring him to the house — perhaps he 
 merely came ! When he arrived he coolly told Aunty that 
 he had come for her daughter. Fancy ! When she objected, 
 he referred the matter to Nell, and she decided — just as she 
 
92 THE HEALER 
 
 did that other time when it was a question of opening her 
 head. One would say he had some sort of mysterious power 
 over her, though she seems to act of her own will. ... I 
 believe myself she is frightened at the bottom of her heart. 
 
 "Well, the storm had burst just before my arrival. In 
 the midst of it the Colonel blew in, and received an insult, I 
 gather, from the Wild One. Insults were passing about 
 rather freely. When I got there, the battle was in full cry. 
 Aunty was talking very plainly, making nasty little remarks 
 about adventurers, fortune hunters, etc., punctuated by 
 the Colonel's explosions, 'Nonsense'. . . . 'Oh, I say it's 
 infernal rot.' . . . 'Damned impudence,' and the Uke. Of 
 course Aunty mentioned the social, — what shall I call them? 
 — distinctions, but that did not seem to bother the Wild One 
 much, nor anything she said, in fact. He merely stood there 
 without apparently listening, as if she were a meddlesome 
 iay, buzzingly, annoyingly vocal, to be endiu-ed for a certain 
 length of time. 
 
 "After all Aunty need not have made it so broad, the social 
 difference. For what was she but the daughter of a country 
 parson teaching school at Bellows Falls when dear old Uncle 
 John married her and carried her off to the city and fortune ? 
 He was a clerk in the bank, then. Of course uncle became 
 very successful and prominent — he was the kind that would 
 arrive anywhere. But Aunty, in spite of all the money and 
 the position he gave her, still reminds one of Bellows Falls, 
 'doing the dishes' and 'keeping company.' And it is just 
 that sort, you know, who feel the awful social gulf, when the 
 next generation comes along with nothing but hope and cour- 
 age in its pocket. It has always seemed to me ridiculous in 
 
THE HEALER 93 
 
 our country, this sudden discovery of immense social dis- 
 tinctions. The only standard we ever had is money, and 
 Uncle John's modest million or two hardly puts Aunty in 
 the top class. (Though, the Colonel, they say, is getting 
 very rich.) That part of the row, I confess, seemed to me 
 plain vulgar. But if Aunty hoped to make any impression 
 on the Wild One by shaking her dollars in his face, she must 
 have been disappointed. His eyes were on Nell all the time, 
 reading her, — perhaps holding her to his purpose. 
 
 "I don't believe the money idea ever entered his mind, 
 really, — there are such men even to-day. When the Colo- 
 nel in his sneering voice asked him, 'How do you pro- 
 pose to support your wife? ' he replied quite simply, 'As 
 you do yours — by my work.' 
 
 '"Practising medicine up there in the woods?' 
 
 " ' Of course — why not ? ' 
 
 '"A fine prospect that for a refined girl !' 
 
 '"It's my work — it is a life good enough for any one,' he 
 said with real dignity. 
 
 '"Treating dirty half-breeds,' the Colonel sneered. 
 
 '"Or turning the forest into wood pulp — which is better ? ' 
 
 '"I'll never give her any money if she marries you,' 
 Aunty here pronounced. 'Her father fortunately left his 
 money all to me.' 
 
 "'Ihopeyou'llkeepit: I want the girl, not your money.' . . . 
 
 "It was quite genuine and made you like him. But he 
 needn't have been so stubborn. In fact, all of them were 
 just ent&te, and refused to look sensibly at the situation 
 and make the best of it. The Colonel knows several 
 of the university trustees, and Dr. Jenks is the most im- 
 
94 THE HEALER 
 
 portant man in the medical school. Between them they 
 might easily steer Nell's genius into conventional respecta- 
 bility aijd prosperity. No doubt after they have all cooled 
 off, something of the sort will happen. I know that Dr. 
 Jenks has a high opinion of the Wild One's ability — I 
 mean to tell him the whole affair if I get the chance. . . . 
 To go back to my story: — 
 
 " With that last retort about the money, he turned to Nell 
 and said quietly, 'It's no use my staying here. I'll wait 
 for you in the city. You can reach me at the hospital,' 
 and without so much as a look at the others he started for 
 the door. His hand was on the knob when Nell called, 
 'Wait!' She slipped between Aunty and the Colonel — I 
 thought she was going with him then and there — but she 
 didn't. Putting her arms around him, she raised her head 
 and kissed him — a long kiss, before us all. 'To-morrow,' 
 I heard her whisper. When she turned away her eyes were 
 wet. In her face was that happy look she had when she 
 gave herself to his knife, and as for him — the look of one 
 who sees his angel of glory descending to him. Yes, just 
 that, I can't help it ! Oh, it's love fast enough. But will it 
 last — I mean can she keep the high key of romance ? 
 
 " When he was gone, she put her arm about me and squeezed 
 me, sajdng, 'You'll help me. Vera dear? I don't want to 
 be all alone !' The child was trembling. I believe she's 
 frightened at herself. 
 
 "What happened afterwards with Aunty and the Colonel 
 makes no difference. They were loud and abusive, scolded 
 the girl like a maid 'for encouraging the fellow.' The 
 Colonel said nasty things about his character : he was a drunk- 
 
THE HEALER 95 
 
 ard, dope-fiend, thrown out of a European hospital, and all 
 the rest of the stories he had heard at the Settlement. 
 
 " ' I won't Usten to you ! ' Nell said, starting to leave the 
 room. 
 
 "'At least he might try to make himself presentable, — 
 be some one,' poor Aunty wailed. 
 
 '"He is Some One,' Nell replied with much dignity, and 
 sailed off, leaving us to face the wreck. 
 
 "'To think that This should happen to me,' Aunty 
 whimpered, 'that my only daughter could lower herself 
 so,' etc. You know the vein ! When the older generation 
 discovers that its young has a will of its own with ideas about 
 life and chooses to exercise it against their will. . . . 
 
 "There was no hope of luncheon, so I left the outraged 
 family to simmer down. And that very night, will you be- 
 lieve me, the Goodnow carriage drove up to our house and 
 Nell got out with a little bag in her hand. 
 
 "'You needn't wait, Clem,' she said to the driver, and to 
 me she explained, 'Will you take me in for the night? I 
 couldn't stand 'em, talking about money, money all the 
 time, — what they would do with their money!' 
 
 "She was quite pale, dressed in a summer gown, one that 
 she used to wear at the Lake after she was well enough to go 
 out in the canoe. 
 
 '"That's all my trousseau,' she explained, holding out 
 the little bag. 
 
 " I took her in my arms — she seemed so frail and girlish, 
 standing there on the steps with her little bag. To think 
 that Nell should make the great adventure — in this fashion ! 
 ... I fear for her." 
 
XI 
 
 Miss Councillor's account of that next eventful day is 
 also the best, — given in intimate confidences with feminine 
 friends. 
 
 "I shall never be able to understand it, wholly," she said, 
 "Nell's taking such a step as she did. Nell ! If it had been 
 some other woman, more sentimental, a silly fool or exalted. 
 But Nell is healthy minded and practical, more like Aunty 
 really than one would suspect. And she is not what I should 
 call intellectual, capable of acting from any theory, — not in 
 the least, — nor a girl who doesn't care for things, — the 
 commonplace little things, comforts and luxuries, and her 
 own small place in her world. 
 
 " So that day she seemed to me like one in a trance, moving 
 in an unrealized world. I must believe that man has done 
 something to her, — I mean actually changed her mind, 
 when he had her with brain exposed in his power. Why not ? 
 Such strange things are done nowadays by these doctors! 
 Certainly all this winter in Europe she has not been her old 
 self, — brooding and shy, with queer moods, half the time 
 absent in mind. Or it may be just the fire of his love that 
 has melted her character and remoulded it to his end. Either 
 way he has created a new Nell, — remember that ! The 
 awful question that haunts me is, will it last, this other 
 creature of his making? Terrible responsibility for him. 
 
 96 
 
THE HEALER 97 
 
 "Surely it was not the wedding I had expected for our 
 Nell. Nor the one I should want for myself ! But of all 
 girls I have known Nell should have the usual ornaments to 
 life ; she is so fond of pretty clothes, and should have been 
 married in satin and bridal veil, with flowers and cake and 
 presents, a crowd of good friends about her, a full church 
 with the organ trumpeting, and so on, — all the frills, in a 
 word. They count for the woman, and Nell is so much the 
 woman ! 
 
 "Instead, she and I slipped away the next morning to the 
 city on the eight-forty, and went out to the hospital. I said 
 what I could to have him come to our house and give a sem- 
 blance of decency to the thing, but she simply didn't hear 
 me. It would have been awkward for me, too, I must con- 
 fess. Well, we waited there in the office with nurses and 
 patients, — horrid smelly place, — while they hunted up 
 the Wild One. He hurried in to us with a brown paper 
 parcel under his arm, all his 'outfit,' I suppose, as they 
 say up north, or was it surgical implements? He scarcely 
 noticed my presence, but his eyes fired when he saw Nell. 
 They stood there looking into each other's eyes, unmindful 
 of the staring mob, looking, looking, — oh, he loves her, 
 worships her ! It thrilled me, just to see it. But I wonder 
 if he knows her, what she really is deep down, all the woman 
 of her, from which she can't get away forever ? I hope so. 
 
 "There we sat in a corner of the crowded office, the three 
 of us. Suddenly he jumped up, hugging his paper parcel 
 and grabbing her bag in the other hand, — the same absurd 
 little bag she'd come to me with. 'What are we waiting 
 for?' he exclaimed. 'There's the day express in less than 
 
98 THE HEALER 
 
 an hour — we must hurry ! ' And I believe they would have 
 gone off 'way up there into the wilderness, just like that, 
 without any ceremony, marriage, or anything, if it hadn't 
 been for me. They did not seem to think of it ! Perhaps it 
 makes no difference, — going through the form, if you are 
 throwing convention overboard as they are. However, I 
 put in a word for respectability, if you hke — insisted that 
 they should see some one — a justice of the peace at the very 
 least. He acquiesced at once, but Nell seemed quite indif- 
 ferent. 
 
 "He went over to the clerk in charge and asked for the 
 nearest minister, scribbled the address on his brown paper 
 parcel, and then we started out to trail down the avenue 
 in search of marriage. Was ever anything like it? Of 
 course, you read of lots of people who do that very thing, 
 but it never seems quite real — at least they're the sort of 
 people one never knows, who live and die quite casually. 
 Even our servants get married properly. So we three trailed 
 on down the street, as I said — he didn't even think of getting 
 a cab and I was so overcome with hysterical mirth at the 
 whole thing that I didn't* He was carrying the big paper 
 parcel in one hand and Nell's little bag in the other. The 
 people on the street actually stopped to look : we must have 
 had our business written all over us. It was like the play, at 
 least like actors and actresses ! 
 
 "We arrived at the address, on a dingy side street. I shall 
 never forget the smallest detail of the thing, — the suspicious 
 servant who opened the door, and how she made us stand 
 in the vestibule while she went to consult the parson. Then 
 the seedy little man, half asleep, who didn't look at us. I 
 
THE HEALER 99 
 
 suppose he has dozens of the same sort daily. What do 
 they call it — 'legalizing passion'? We stepped into the 
 front room, and there in that smelly parlor, with its shabby 
 ugly furniture and dirty curtains, with the noise of people 
 on the pavement just below the windows, the ash carts 
 backing up to the curb, it was done. Helen Goodnow be- 
 came the Wild One's legal mate, — Mrs. Frederick Holden. 
 Think of it ! To step off the crowded city street where 
 every one is doing the commonplace things, with some man, 
 and after a few gabbled sentences by a minister who has never 
 laid eyes on you before to become Mrs. Somebody else, 
 without even your own name to take away with you. It's 
 funny, and it's awful at the same time. . . . No, I'd never 
 do that, not for any man born on earth, no matter how much 
 I might love him. I think I had rather go away without 
 the ceremony, really! Yes, really!. . . . 
 
 "I could see that I wasn't wanted as soon as the thing was 
 done. We three drifted up the city and stopped at a restau- 
 rant for luncheon. Nobody could eat a mouthful, of course. 
 (He ordered oyster stew !) He went out to find a time-table 
 or get tickets or something, and Nell and I faced each other 
 alone. She seemed quite calm, much less flurried than I was, 
 but her thoughts were far away. 
 
 "'Please get Peggy for me and send her up if you can,' 
 she said. 
 
 "'Don't you want any clothes?' 
 
 " ' Oh, no — nothing of that sort — they wouldn't be suit- 
 able up there. ' 
 
 "So I am to forward her pet dog by express, — no jewels, 
 no clothes, no books, nothing civilized. She's thorough ! 
 
100 THE HEALER 
 
 '"And don't be hard on mother,' she said; 'she can't 
 help it, poor dear.' 
 
 "Aunty ! 
 
 '"I hope she won't be hard on me for my part in this 
 affair, ' I repUed. 
 
 "And that was all we said while we sat there alone. Oh, 
 I asked her if she would write to me at once, and she repUed 
 vaguely, ' Sometime ! ' for all the world as if she were going 
 into another life and expected no communication with this 
 one. Then he came back and said there was another train 
 sooner than he expected. So we drifted on toward the 
 station. . . . The last I saw of them they were crossing 
 the street in front of the station, just the two in the crowd 
 bobbing all about them, he a bit ahead with his parcel and the 
 bag. Nell gave me a little wave of the hand when they 
 reached the other side safely, and turned to follow him. He 
 was stalking on. 
 
 "And that is fate for one woman! An accident throws 
 her up against a certain man. Something happens between 
 tliem — ; we call it love for short, or nature — or fate ? 
 And then the world is turned upside down for the woman, 
 at least. Will she be happy with her fate? Who can tell 
 — I have a sinking feeling at my heart when I think of her. 
 There are so many hidden rocks in the channel she has chosen. 
 I hope so, — oh, I hope so for her! I never loved her so 
 much as to-day. But I could not do it — never ! Con- 
 vention is safer for the ordinary mortal, woman-mortal like 
 myself. And I am ordinary mortal, so far as the woman in 
 me goes, I know it. So is Nell, but I'm afraid she doesn't 
 know it, nor does he. Blind, blind — with a fierce flame 1 
 
THE HEALER 101 
 
 They say that sort of flame dies down, leaving the world 
 pitilessly bare and gray. 
 
 "He is not ordinary mortal, I am sure of that. But that 
 also gives me fear. Happiness or tragedy from this morning's 
 work? I am wonderfully inclined to agree with Aunty 
 for once; she dislikes 'experiments.' 
 
 "We have just begun another experiment." 
 
 If this intelligent young woman, who looked at her world 
 with uncommonly clear eyes, could have seen into the 
 depths of the hearts of these two who on that April 
 morning had begun their great experiment, if she had felt 
 their rapturous certainty, their glowing calm, like the smooth 
 surface of deepest waters, she would have had less fear, 
 knowing that fate held sweet as well as bitter in its store. 
 And who could say that such sweet were not worth all the 
 bitter that might come for endless days? Such sweet 
 might be worth much bitter — for those who craved it. 
 
 Two out of the crowded city street off for the great ex- 
 periment ! 
 
PART TWO 
 
The northern spring had barely softened the earth that 
 April day when the two lovers reached the Lake. The black 
 firs still dominated the sullen landscape, and in the clearings 
 on the hillsides lay banks of drifted snow. The sun, drop- 
 ping into watery clouds over the shoulder of old Macatawa, 
 could not dispel the evening chill. 
 
 As their boat grounded on the sandy shore of the cove be- 
 fore the Healing Spring the young wife looked up eagerly at 
 the little stone cabin hanging on the edge of the cliff. It 
 seemed small and gray, like a lump of the lichened rock on 
 which it rested. In her dreams she had seen it larger, — 
 almost grand, — springing airily towards the blue sky, with 
 ample sweep of roof. Not this low, gray cabin, with its broad 
 eaves that nearly touched the ground. Unconsciously her 
 glance shifted from the stone cabin to the man, who was haul- 
 ing the heavy boat up the shore, as if to assure herself that 
 he too had not shrunken under the test of intimacy. He was 
 busy in securing his boat and getting out the few supplies 
 they had brought with them from the Settlement, his atten- 
 tion absorbed as always in the thing just before him to be 
 done. At last he turned to her with a smile on his sombre 
 face, as if he would welcome her to her new home — his land. 
 Then lading himself with the bundles, he started up the steep 
 path along the cliff and she followed. 
 
 105 
 
106 THE HEALER 
 
 When they stood before the rough plank door of the little 
 house, she felt anew a sense of disappointment in the grim 
 bareness of this home. It was like the chill of the April 
 evening. Set on the very edge of the cliff, facing the hills 
 beyond the Lake, hemmed in at the rear by a thick growth 
 of firs, the stone house was solitary. Lonely and bare ! 
 . . . Holden put down his bundles and waited before open- 
 ing the door, a curious smile on his face. He watched her 
 while she examined her new home, — his handiwork. It 
 had been built by him in winter storm, through struggle 
 and stress, stone laid upon stone with love and aspiration, — 
 would she understand? She smiled back at her husband 
 bravely, as if trying to comprehend all that it meant to him. 
 
 "We will cover it with vines," she said. 
 
 Slowly he pushed open the heavy door, and slightly bend- 
 ing their heads, they stepped in together. There was one 
 large rectangular room, with a bank of windows on either 
 side, north and south. At the east end a huge fireplace 
 occupied the entire width, built monumentally of weather- 
 stained slabs of granite taken from those seams that the 
 lapping water had stained with iron. Within the cavernous 
 hearth upon two pieces of black basalt rested a pyre of drift- 
 wood, with dried jimiper boughs beneath. Holden struck 
 a match and handed it to his wife. She knelt on the rough 
 hearthstone and' touched the feathery tips of the juniper, 
 which leaped swiftly into flame that curled through the gray 
 wood, giving out an aromatic odor. Suddenly after a mo- 
 ment of smoky dubitation, the entire pyre burst into flame, 
 lighting the large room to the recesses of the rafters. The 
 ruddy flames illuminated the figure of the woman crouching 
 
THE HEALER 107 
 
 on the broad hearthstone, and of the man standing by her 
 side intently watching her. 
 
 For some minutes she knelt there, staring into the flames, 
 as if fascinated by their fiery fervor. Then drawn by his 
 shining eyes she looked up at him, and with a little cry of 
 joy shpped into his arms. Their trembling lips met. This 
 she knew was the sacrament he had willed for them, on the 
 altar of their new hearth, not that other affair of mumbled 
 words in the minister's front parlor ! 
 
 She forgot now that first loneliness, which had chilled her 
 heart at the touch of the stern wilderness. As the fire ate 
 hungrily of the dry wood, as her husband's kiss burned upon 
 her fresh lips, all thought of the past — everything behind 
 and below — faded from her mind. She was wholly his, 
 as he had willed it to be. 
 
 "Eric," she murmured with fluttering breath, linking her 
 hands about his bare head and looking into his deep eyes, 
 — "my husband!" . . . 
 
 There was much yet to be seen in this new home, small as 
 it was. The floor, made of broad stones whose faces had been 
 washed smooth by the water, was covered with bear skins. 
 Before the fireplace there was a broad settle covered with deer 
 hide, and a heavy table of oak planking ran beneath the 
 southerly windows. A few rude chairs of bent willow, such as 
 Indians make, cupboards and shelves, completed the furniture 
 of the room. Like the walls and the roof it was all the 
 man's own work, — rough and strong, with the natural quali- 
 ties of material not disguised by craft. 
 
 At the west end — opposite the fireplace — a little door 
 
108 THE HEALER 
 
 led into another room, raised by one step. Here where the 
 smooth ledge cropped up out of the ground he had made 
 her a room of her own that jutted out clear above the Lake 
 itself. As she entered that first time the westerly window 
 was still red with a ray of sunshine which had contrived to 
 pierce the watery clouds. Here on a broad seat cushioned 
 with skins she might lie and watch the Lake and the clouds 
 floating across the hills beyond, and stormy nights hear the 
 wiad rushing through the firs and the beat of the water agaiast 
 the curving cliff below. Within a recess in the opposite wall 
 was a bed of balsam freshly cut and fragrant beneath its 
 blanket cover. 
 
 He had thought of all — and made all ready before he 
 came for her. This was the small inner room where he would 
 shrine her apart from the world, even from himself. 
 
 That night he got their food, cooking it skilfully like a 
 woodsman on the bed of coals, while she lay on the settle 
 and watched him. As they had forgotten to bring candles 
 or lamps, they ate by the flickering firelight, sitting gayly on 
 the floor before the fire. 
 
 Already the silent cabin, with the dim shadows upon the 
 raftered roof from the flickering flames, and the small, still, 
 chamber beyond seemed to be hers. From this hour her 
 life was to be lived therein. And the man crouched by her 
 side before the fire, the glow illumining his dark face, was 
 that lord and master of her spirit, who had taken her from 
 the world she had known into his own kingdom. . . . 
 
 "Eric," she mm-mured. 
 
 He turned to her questioningly, and she was silent. 
 
THE HEALER 109 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "You must never leave me," she faltered. "I should be 
 afraid, alone." 
 
 "Afraid!" His voice rang loud in the silent cabin. 
 "Afraid of what?" 
 
 She shivered, not knowing how to express her feeling that 
 now she had left her own world so far behind, she must always 
 have him by her side to make another. 
 
 "Don't say that!" he chided gently. "You and I have 
 had the courage to cast out fear, remember — forever ! " 
 
 He touched her head with the tips of his fingers caressingly. 
 His face, so firmly graven in the firelight, had the calm surety 
 of one who at last, after struggle, had come into his kingdom. 
 The peak of his high desire, shining in simlight or dimly 
 veiled, was now revealed close at hand. 
 
 The brown hair fell from her temple, disclosing the long 
 scar that he had made. His fingers traced the wound. She 
 saw in his eyes the soft glow of wonder and worship for her. 
 
 "Fire of life !" he murmured. 
 
 "Oh, Eric!" she cried, her childish face suddenly grave. 
 "If — I were not all that you think — all that you want ! 
 ... I am so little — so small." 
 
 He closed her protest with his lips, murmuring : — 
 
 "Small! You have given me the gift — the gift," he 
 sang in her ears. 
 
 "The gift?" 
 
 "My gift — the gift of life itself." 
 
 "I would like to give you all," she said simply. 
 
 "Mine — mine," he whispered. 
 
 "Yours!". . . 
 
110 THE HEALER 
 
 Thus the world was shut without these two, and here 
 in the silence of the great wilderness, in the dim twilight 
 of the stone house over whose rough walls the red firelight 
 danced, man and woman became one. 
 
 The man held the dream of his heart. The woman, mur- 
 miiring, "Yours — make me what you will !" yielded to her 
 master. . . . 
 
 Lying in his arms on the bough bed through the still April 
 night she could hear a httle wind breathing softly around 
 the corner of the cabin and a plashing of waves below. 
 Lying in his arms she could hear the pulse of the man's heart 
 beating steadily, strongly. And a new mystery came over 
 the childish face, prefiguring what she was to become, — 
 woman and mother. 
 
II 
 
 She woke alone in the small, silent chamber and for a time 
 lay wondering at the transformation of her life. Far beneath 
 the waves lapped softly on the rocks. After calling "Eric, 
 Eric," and getting no response she ran to the window. It 
 was dazzhngly blue outside, — the Lake, the sky, the forest, 
 the hills. The canoe lay below, nuzzling into the sandy 
 beach. In the outer room the gray ashes of their first fire 
 powdered the hearth. Hearing footsteps outside she opened 
 the door to see a red-faced little man with snow-white mous- 
 tache and hair bowing before her. 
 
 '"Morning, ma'am!" he said. "Doctor's at the Spring. 
 I'm getting your breakfast ready." He pointed into the 
 firs where the roof of a "cook shack" could be seen. 
 
 "And you are — " 
 
 " Old Gray Jack ! Yes, ma'am, old Gray Jack — good for 
 nothin' old Gray Jack ! " 
 
 He smiled, bobbed his head, and disappeared into the 
 firs. When he had reappeared with the breakfast and put 
 it on the table, he stood at attention in military fashion and 
 explained himself : — 
 
 "That's what they called me in the army, twenty years 
 back, — old Gray Jack. I cooked for the officers' mess. 
 And a drunken fool I was too, ma'am. And they called me 
 
 111 
 
112 THE HEALER 
 
 the same out on the plains where I cooked for the round-ups 
 — the big ones they used to have. And a drunken old fool 
 I was then, too ! " 
 
 He paused to fetch a jar of honey from the clipboard and 
 place it beside the cofiFee and bacon. 
 
 "Wild honey — he got it up yonder on the mountain." 
 
 "Tell me how you came here?" she asked. 
 
 "That's a long story," the old fellow replied, thoughtfully 
 stroking his white moustache. "The doctor found me up 
 in one of them lumber camps. He saved me life, ma'am, 
 just that !" 
 
 "I've heard him speak of you." 
 
 "Not much good there is to be said of Gray Jack," the old 
 fellow chirped cheerfully. "Camp cooking and drink for 
 thirty years — that's all — till the doctor got hold of me. 
 He's a wonderful man, the doctor !" 
 
 The young wife smiled happily. 
 
 "Of course he is !" 
 
 "He just took me home with him to his cabin up yonder 
 and cured me. It's been most a year now, and I have 
 never been down the Lake once to the Settlement. Before 
 'twas every other week, regular ! " 
 
 "And the Spring water cured your rheumatism?" 
 
 "Maybe it was the water — and maybe not," the old man 
 said with a twinkle. "How can one tell? . . . There's 
 the doctor now ! " 
 
 Holden came in with a preoccupied air, a slight frown on 
 his dark face, and gave some directions to the old man. 
 The wife realized quickly that even their great romance, 
 so momentous to her as to absorb her entire being, must come 
 
THE HEALER 113 
 
 to the man as an episode, a link in a long chain of fact that 
 had begun before they had met and would go on always, 
 more or less outside her reach. 
 
 "The woman is worse," the doctor explained. 
 
 They sat down to their first breakfast in the little stone 
 house. 
 
 "I meant to get your breakfast," she said. 
 
 His face cleared from its preoccupation. 
 
 "Gray Jack will help you — he's a good cook." 
 
 "He's been telling me what you have done for him." 
 
 Holden laughed lightly, saying : — 
 
 "He had his trial while I was away. He stayed on here 
 with that sick woman ■ — never went once to the Settlement. 
 He'll get to be a man yet !" 
 
 After breakfast they went down to see the one patient. 
 The cabins in the grove of beach trees had been roughly 
 patched and fitted with doors and windows, but they offered 
 poor shelter for the sick. 
 
 "Gray Jack and I have done the best we could," Holden 
 said. "But we must build something better if others come 
 to us." 
 
 She noted idly that he spoke as if he expected more pa- 
 tients, and she wondered where in this wilderness they would 
 come from. . . . 
 
 They entered the cabin where the half-breed woman lay. 
 She was a miserable, wasted creature, hardly older than 
 the doctor's young wife, yet with the marks of age on her 
 bony hands and face. There was something in her wretched- 
 ness, her greasy black hair, her emaciated features, that 
 I 
 
114 THE HEALER 
 
 was repulsive to the dainty woman. She felt stifled in the 
 small cabin with this sick creature breathing heavily, and she 
 shrank from the glance that the woman gave her out of her 
 little eyes. 
 
 It was for this poor half-breed woman that her lover had 
 failed to meet her on her return from Europe ! That he 
 might care for her and nurse her back to her life ! She 
 watched her husband curiously. He seemed wholly obliv- 
 ious of the woman's squalor, and touched her dirty flesh 
 softly as he might fine silk. When the sick woman was 
 racked with a sudden spasm, he held her in his firm grasp 
 until she sank exhausted. The young wife could bear it no 
 longer, and stepped out into the open air where all was gay 
 and fresh with the fragrance of coming spring. Presently 
 the doctor joined her. 
 
 " Consumption, I'm afraid," he explained. " Poor woman ! 
 She has children — I must get her well !" 
 
 In his tone there was the ring of a superior will that must 
 always conquer — the true source of his healing power. 
 
 "Who looks after her?" she asked. 
 
 "Gray Jack and I mostly. A woman comes over from 
 the Settlement to help." 
 
 "I suppose," she said slowly, "you will want me to help 
 you — to nurse — . " She tried bravely to overcome the 
 sense of repulsion that the sick woman had roused. Her 
 husband looked at her with a curious smile on his lips, as if 
 for the first time a new aspect of their union was presenting 
 itself to his mind. 
 
 "Perhaps, sometime," he said vaguely, "when there is 
 need." 
 
THE HEALER 115 
 
 Secretly she hoped that the day of that need would be 
 long coming. She looked up at the little stone house resting 
 on the cliff above in the full morning sunUght, and already 
 it seemed to beckon to its mistress. Up there was light, 
 hfe, love ! Things she understood. 
 
 "I must start my vines," she said lightly. "Your old 
 Gray Jack promised to help me make a garden — just be- 
 yond the house on the tip of the rock. It will be lovely 
 there!" 
 
 On their way back they passed by the Spring. A neat 
 path now led from the cabins through the alder thicket to 
 the green pool where the healing water steamed. All under- 
 growth had been cut away from the pool, leaving a clean 
 pebbly edge, and on one side a slab of smooth stone had been 
 placed. 
 
 "Gray Jack and I cleaned it up," the doctor explained. 
 
 They stood for a moment on the stone, looking into the 
 green water over which hung the thin veil of vapor. A 
 blurred image of themselves rose to greet them through the 
 steam. 
 
 "He thinks it cured his rheumatism. The lumber jacks 
 come in here sometimes to get the water and to bathe. . . . 
 It's well they have some sort of a fetich. ... I must build 
 a proper bath-house ! " 
 
 Again it seemed to her that he spoke as if his work were 
 to enlarge and remain here in the wilderness beside the 
 Healing Spring. 
 
 When they reached the stone cabin, they found Gray Jack 
 all ready, spade in hand. He had brought some loam and leaf 
 mould in a basket and dumped it on the bare rock. 
 
116 THE HEALER 
 
 "There'll be many a load of that before the garden is 
 made ! " he grumbled. 
 
 That day they began the garden, cutting a circle from the 
 stiff firs beneath the windows at the very end of the rocky 
 plateau. An old stump was left, and also a large flat boulder 
 for a table. 
 
 "I shall plant hollyhocks and larkspur beside the win- 
 dows," she said. 
 
 "To nod to you at sunrise !" 
 
 "And afternoons we will sit here in the shelter of the firs 
 and hsten to the thrushes. Do you remember the thrush 
 that sang that first time we came here?" 
 
 So they worked and played, like children, through the 
 on-coming spring, fetching plants from the woods, setting 
 out vines, making their garden on the rocky ledge above the 
 Lake. 
 
Ill 
 
 Thus began for the woman her new Httle world, so remote 
 from that bustling other one that she had always known. She 
 found that she had done well not to have brought with her 
 either clothes or trinkets, — anything that might remind 
 her of old habits and uses. Her Wild One did not care for 
 adornments, — the little beauties and elegancies of her old 
 self. Everything, she dimly perceived, in their lives, in 
 themselves, was to be created afresh by themselves, here in 
 the soUtude of the wilderness where only the elements of 
 things were. It was his idea: she did not question it. 
 Enough for her that she was living with him an idyl of love 
 as sweet as her girlish dream had imagined. To be gloriously 
 ahve from dawn until sunset, free as a bird in her little nest 
 above the shining lake ; to be served, adored, worshipped by 
 her Wild One, — that was an existence blissfully perfect. 
 And it would be thus always ! . . . 
 
 One day the making of the garden was interrupted. A 
 canoe put into the little bay, and a swarthy man climbed the 
 cliff path and knocked at the door. The doctor was wanted 
 in one of the distant camps above Belle Fourche. There- 
 after these summons by Indian or half-breed messenger 
 became more frequent, — now in the morning, again at 
 night when they had settled themselves before the fire for 
 a long evening of work and talk, or in the chill misty dawn. 
 
 117 
 
118 THE HEALER 
 
 Often she went with her husband on these expeditions, up 
 through the chain of lakes and rivers, helping with the paddle, 
 making the carries, learning the trails that wound through 
 the valleys and hills into the distant camps of the wilderness. 
 They visited the lonely huts of the trapper, the squalid Indian 
 tents, the boarded shanties of the lumbermen. She helped 
 her husband in his work with the sick, swiftly acquiring the 
 necessary skill. Always, however, she shrank from the 
 misery of these rough people stricken by disease in their 
 ill-smelling cabins. Disease and squalor were insurmount- 
 ably repugnant to her nature. The doctor did not seem to 
 see this misery, to feel the meanness of these hovels. The 
 dirty, ugly human bodies he touched with his delicate fingers 
 as though they were fine and precious. Watching him she 
 often marvelled. 
 
 "They are always sending for you !" she protested once. 
 "Isn't there any other doctor they can get?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he laughed. "But they want me. They 
 think I can cure them." 
 
 And then with an ironical smile he continued : — 
 
 "The sick are weak. They worship strength. They look 
 for some power from without themselves to work a miracle. 
 ... I am their nearest chance of the miracle ! " 
 
 "It is good to be a miracle for any one," she said thought- 
 fully. And he laughed at her seriousness, — youthfully, 
 glad of his strength, his skill, his will, — ready to make long 
 journeys into the wilderness to carry his heahng power to 
 those in need. And the woman was sufficiently happy to 
 be near him, to be his companion on the lonely journeys. 
 
 So all through that springtime, when the stern north 
 
THE HEALER 119 
 
 was rioting in its brief season of birth, they made these er- 
 rands together, paddling over the silent waters under starry 
 skies, sleeping out under the thick firs, or lying beneath 
 their rain-soaked tarpaulin through a storm. To the woman 
 of Suburbia, with her clipped and ordered experience, there 
 came a new feeling for life and nature, a love for this large, 
 silent, outer world of primitive circumstance, rough-coated 
 and harsh, yet always beautiful. At night in the lonely 
 forest she crept into the sheltering arms of her man, — a 
 hardy, brown creature, half dryad, shy and loving, soft 
 mould for the man's will. 
 
 So enveloped in this new existence she became that she 
 never asked herself whither it led, — if it were to be always 
 thus, the two of them nestling alone in their stone cabin 
 with the growing vines, on the bold cliff above the Lake. Her 
 Wild One, who had taken her from death itself, had trans- 
 ported her to his wonderful dream life, where even the sick 
 he visited seemed scarcely real, rather another reality she 
 did not fully penetrate. She felt, in rare moments of 
 inner speculation, that it would continue for the years and 
 years of a full life, — all that had been in her girl's existence 
 fading farther and farther into the misty outer horizon of 
 her soul. 
 
 Now and aga,in the doctor brought his sick out of the wilder- 
 ness to the Spring so that they might be under his eye more 
 constantly and also have better chances of recovery. For 
 these he had only the old cabins, ill provided and mustily 
 decayed, patch and clean them as he might with Gray 
 Jack's help. He talked of building something larger, better 
 
120 THE HEALER 
 
 suited for the sick. One sunny June morning when the 
 birds were nesting in the thicket about the Spring, he marked 
 out the place for his new cabin-hospital, while his wife sat by 
 on a log and watched him. He chose a little clearing against 
 the cliff ujider some gray birches where the sun lay longest. 
 With his axe he cut away the sapling imdergrowth, hewed 
 stakes, and drove them into the ground to mark the four 
 corners. Then with his brow knit in thought he paced out 
 the dimensions, and apparently dissatisfied with the space 
 he had first enclosed he went over it again, adding imtil he 
 had nearly doubled the original size. 
 
 "Why do you make it so large?" she asked. 
 
 "It will be needed," he replied vaguely, "and more too !" 
 
 "Where will you get the logs for such a big cabin?" 
 
 "This is to be of stone!" he exclaimed suddenly, as if the 
 purpose to build solidly for all time had come to him at the 
 moment. 
 
 Then and there the plan was made, and the first comer- 
 stone, a huge rock that had fallen from the cliff, was rolled 
 into place. As they slowly climbed to their house that 
 night, Helen asked : — 
 
 "So you mean to be here always?" 
 
 "And why not ?" he retorted quickly. "What could take 
 me away — now ? " 
 
 "Oh, one can't tell," she said with vague dissatisfaction 
 at the prospect opening before her. 
 
 The new building with its great corner-stone seemed to 
 seal the future, and suddenly the world was narrower, — 
 that large, free world in which she had roamed these past 
 weeks with her lover. 
 
THE HEALER 121 
 
 "You don't want to run away?" her husband asked teas- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Leave you !" she cried, her brown hands clinging about 
 his neck. " Never — that could never happen." 
 
 "Oh," he smiled ironically, "anything can happen !" 
 
IV 
 
 Once every month Holden went over to the Settlement 
 across the Lake in his large boat to fetch supplies and what 
 letters there might come for them. The day after the new 
 building was staked out he left early in the morning for the 
 trip, planning to bring back with him materials and tools 
 for the work he had begun. 
 
 Alone with the June day on her hands, Helen idled in her 
 little garden behind the cabin, where the tiny shoots already 
 had begun to appear, then wandered along the shore in the 
 direction of Colonel Blake's camp — the Eyrie. These 
 last warm days of late June had brought out the flags on the 
 wooden hotel at the Settlement. The fishing season was on, 
 she knew, and the hotel had opened for the first adventurers 
 into the wilderness from the cities. Occasionally a boat 
 or a canoe darkened the blue water as it passed up the Lake 
 through the narrows. This morning a boat came so close 
 inshore under the cliff that she could hear in her bedroom the 
 voices of men talking beneath her. 
 
 "Who lives up in that perch?" some one asked. 
 
 "The Healer," was the reply. 
 
 "Healer ! Is that what you call a doctor ?" 
 
 "He's no ordinary doctor — he cures folks," the guide 
 replied with conviction. And afterwards, "He married a 
 city girl and built that place up there." 
 
 "Rather lonely for the city girl," the stranger observed 
 
 122 
 
THE HEALER 123 
 
 in a mocking tone, as the boat slipped out into the broader 
 waters of the Lake. . . . 
 
 While she followed the uneven path through the woods, 
 Helen thought of those chance words. They came to her 
 like voices of the past, like the flags on the hotel, the white 
 sails of the pleasure boats. 
 
 She had not visited the Eyrie since her return to the Lake 
 with her husband. She knew that he did not care for the 
 place. The vines that she and Vera had planted were 
 growing thickly over the boarded windows and doors. A 
 colony of squirrels had established themselves under the ve- 
 randa and scattered their provender carelessly over the 
 floor. At her step they scampered off, and she could see 
 their little beady eyes fixed upon her malevolently from their 
 retreat. She walked around the house, trying to find some 
 loose shutter through which she might peer into the familiar 
 rooms, but every crack had been carefully closed against 
 the searching winter storms. So she sat down on the step 
 in the warm sunlight and looked at the sparkling water, over 
 which a little sail-boat was making its way. 
 
 A year ago, very nearly, she had come hither like the boys 
 and girls who would presently swarm about the big wooden 
 hotel and play on the Lake. All the sensations of those 
 girlish days came sweeping back over her, emphasizing her 
 present changed condition. She looked at her rough brown 
 hands, her worn corduroy skirt and clumsy moccasins — the 
 natural dress for her life — and thought of all her dainty 
 clothes shut up in the closets of Suburbia. . . , What was 
 Vera planning for this summer? The one letter she had 
 received from her old friend lay unanswered. And that 
 
124 THE HEALER 
 
 absurd little Dr. Percy — had he come back to the hotel this 
 season? . . . 
 
 A sail-boat seemed to be laying its course directly across 
 the Lake. Shading her eyes with a hand she stepped to the 
 edge of the veranda and watched its approach with interest. 
 The figure in the stern at the. tiller was familiar, and the 
 man presently waved a hat as if in recognition. She decided 
 the fat little person must be Dr. Percy and involuntarily 
 turned to fly, but it was too late. He had come to call ! 
 While he was making fast the boat, she saw his companion, 
 
 — an older man. 
 
 Dr. Percy came running up the steps, holding out his hands 
 cordially. 
 
 "It's hke old times to see you standing there ! How are 
 you?" 
 
 "You didn't expect to find me here?" 
 
 "I — I didn't know — exactly," he stammered, and she 
 wondered what was the city version of her flight with her 
 Wild One. 
 
 "We live up the shore a little way — won't you come back 
 with me ? " she suggested with strange eagerness. 
 
 "I — I am taking this gentleman — let me introduce him 
 
 — perhaps you know him already, — Mr. Elport — Mrs. — " 
 The stranger, who had been lagging behind, stepped for- 
 ward quickly and said with ready cordiality : — 
 
 " I know your uncle, Colonel Blake — we're partners in a 
 way, you see !" 
 
 He smiled at her beneath his gray moustache, and she 
 found herself turning unaccountably crimson. The world 
 with its ways was strangely disturbing. 
 
THE HEALER 125 
 
 "Indeed," she remarked coldly. 
 
 "And I knew your father, too," he added more gently, 
 with his winning smile, "Mrs. — " he paused for the name 
 that Dr. Percy had not given. 
 
 "Holden," she supplied, again consciously blushing. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Mrs. Holden — I remember hearing the name." 
 This time he smiled more enigmatically, and she wondered 
 what he had heard about her husband. "I would like to 
 meet Dr. Holden — where do you live ?" he asked quickly. 
 
 "A short half mile up the Lake — come back with me, 
 won't you?" 
 
 The two men walked by her side chatting in that light, 
 comfortable manner she had so long been used to. She 
 looked at Elport with especial interest. He was a man over 
 fifty, large and heavy, with the white face and somewhat 
 flabby movements of the city man after a hard winter. He 
 was very much the gentleman, she judged, according to her 
 old standards, — that is, thoroughly experienced in those 
 conventions she had known, and he had also the air of being a 
 man of force, of importance in his world. She liked him at 
 once. She tried to remember if she had heard his name 
 before, if she knew anything about him. 
 
 "Percy here," he was saying, "has shown me some good 
 fishing. But I really came up into the wilderness for busi- 
 ness, you know. We are going to run a railroad in here, — 
 the Colonel and I!" 
 
 "A railroad into the Lake!" she exclaimed, uncertain 
 whether to be pleased by the announcement. "That will 
 bring people, won't it?" She felt sure that her husband 
 would not like it. 
 
126 THE HEALER 
 
 "Of course! That's what we are building it for — to 
 bring in people and get out timber ! " 
 
 "You will spoil the woods." 
 
 " Oh, we're not coming your way, Mrs. Holden — we go 
 up the other side. We'll leave you your wilderness a little 
 while longer !" 
 
 "When will you do it?" she asked breathlessly, like a 
 , child. 
 
 Elport laughed. 
 
 "Not this week 1" he said gayly. "We hope to reach the 
 Settlement by late autumn." And with another of his sym- 
 pathetic smiles he added, "By that time you may be ready 
 to receive a few visitors." 
 
 "I'm afraid my husband won't like it — won't like it at 
 all," she observed quite seriously. "You know he com- 
 plains of the Settlement, says it has spoiled the country." 
 
 "He'll get used to civilization," Elport repHed easily. 
 "We'll bring him patients to try his skill on. No one 
 could stay sick long up here ! " 
 
 They had reached the little stone cabin. The doctor had 
 not returned, and so the young wife showed the visitors 
 the house and the garden on the edge of the cliff. Elport 
 praised the view with the judicious air of a travelled man. 
 
 "It's not magnificent," he said, "but it has something 
 appealing in it — fresh and unspoiled." 
 
 Presently the doctor came sailing into the cove, seated on 
 bags of cement. She called to her husband and beckoned to 
 him, but merely glancing at the group on the cliff he delayed 
 unaccountably, making fast the boat and starting to un- 
 load it. At last Elport rose : — 
 
THE HEALER 127 
 
 "We must be off, Percy! Sorry not to have seen your 
 husband, Mrs. Holden. I hear he is a very remarkable man. 
 No doubt we shall have many a chance to meet later," he 
 concluded lightly, with the easy confidence of the man who 
 always found his way where he cared to go. 
 
 As the two visitors turned into the forest path, Elport 
 paused and said pleasantly : — 
 
 "I knew your father twenty years or more ago — I am 
 glad to meet his daughter." 
 
 "You knew my father?" Helen repeated with a sudden 
 glow in her heart. 
 
 "And we all loved him who knew him — he was a good 
 man of business, but he was much more — much more ! " 
 
 She went a little way into the woods with her guests, and 
 as she returned she thought with a curious pleasure, "He 
 knew father. And he loved him!" Somehow those few 
 words had broken the spell of her present existence. They 
 roused memories and feelings that she could not fathom. . . . 
 
 Her husband was at the house when she returned, unload- 
 ing the pockets of his hunting coat that had been stuffed 
 with purchases at the Settlement. 
 
 "We had our first visitors, Eric !" she exclaimed. 
 
 "So I saw." 
 
 He was about to go back to the boat for the larger bundles. 
 
 "Why didn't you come up ! I called to you." 
 
 "Oh," he replied vaguely, and she knew that he did not 
 want to see the strangers. She pondered while he was 
 gone, and when he had brought up all his bundles, she re- 
 marked: — 
 
 "Don't you want to know who they were?" 
 
128 THE HEALER 
 
 "The doctor pup was one," he said with a laugh. 
 
 "And Mr. Elport." 
 
 "The railroad man." 
 
 " How did you know ? " 
 
 " Every one is talking about him and his railroad over at 
 the Settlement, of course." 
 
 "They mean to bring the railroad to the Lake." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "By next autumn." 
 
 "He told you that?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 After a gloomy pause Holden observed : — 
 
 "Well, that's the beginning of the end — ^the last of our 
 peace." 
 
 "But Eric," she protested, taking up the defence of the 
 invader, "it won't come on this side — it won't hurt the 
 Healing Spring." 
 
 "It will bring the crowd just the same." 
 
 "Mr. Elport said it would bring you patients." 
 
 "Patients!" he flashed with sudden ferocity, jumping 
 from the table where he had perched. Striding to the fire- 
 place he kicked a burning log into the ashes. "What does 
 he think I want of patients — that kind ? Perhaps he would 
 like to have me start a sanitarium here ! A loafing place 
 for a lot of lazy, useless old men and women — the kind that 
 trot about Europe from bath to bath, coddling themselves 
 and fattening doctors. I did not come up here into the 
 woods for that." 
 
 She was amazed at the bitterness which he expressed, 
 striding about the cabin and fuming against the railroad 
 
THE HEALER 129 
 
 and all the works of civilized man. Why he should object 
 to having more patients — and ones able to pay him — now 
 that he had already planned his big hospital cabin, was quite 
 beyond her understanding. After a time he quieted down, 
 and coming up behind her put his arms over her shoulders : — 
 
 "Never mind, little woman ! If the world comes bother- 
 ing us, we'll just move on — strike out into the great north. 
 They'll never catch us up there ! " 
 
 His lips caressed her neck. Once more he was her simple 
 
 Wild One, — impetuous, loving, mysterious. 
 
 " Of course ! " she said easily. 
 
 f 
 But in her heart she could find no reason for moving away 
 
 from the invader, no sympathy for this desire for the pure 
 
 wild, this hermit-like evasion of what people had made of life. 
 
 The railroad, it seemed to her, might be quite a good thing, 
 
 — even for her husband, if he could but see it. 
 
 Later that same evening, as she was looking over the sup- 
 phes which he had brought from the Settlement, she asked 
 abruptly: — 
 
 " Eric, where does the money come from — do those people 
 pay you much ? " 
 
 "No," he said shortly. "I don't ask them for money." 
 
 "Then how do we live?" she pursued. 
 
 "Oh, we live," he answered impatiently. "Do you want 
 some money ? " 
 
 " I need a few things," she said hesitantly. "A few clothes 
 
 — nothing much. I can write to Vera to send me up what 
 I need." 
 
 "No, no," he replied impatiently. "That won't do!" 
 
 E 
 
130 THE HE ALEE 
 
 And going to a corner of the room where he kept his papers 
 and books, he said, "How much do you want? No — it's 
 all there ! Take what you want !" 
 
 Thus he peremptorily dismissed the intricate problem of 
 domestic economy. The next time that she was alone and 
 thought of it she looked into his recess and foimd a few worn 
 bills, a little silver. Turning this money over in her hand, she 
 smiled and thought that Elport's railroad, if it did bring rich 
 patients who would pay for their treatment, might not be a 
 bad thing. For all told there was but eighteen dollars in the 
 cabin. 
 
The summer days went smilingly by, one by one, after this 
 interruption. The young wife worked in her garden, alone 
 now generally, for Gray Jack was helping the doctor lay the 
 stone for the new hospital in the grove below. Sometimes 
 she would look thoughtfully out across the Lake in the direc- 
 tion of the distant Settlement, where could be seen boats 
 flying about, which meant people. She began to wonder if 
 little Dr. Percy and the railroad man, with the pleasant smile 
 and the agreeable manners, would come some day to make 
 another call. 
 
 Then one warm morning while she dawdled in her garden 
 she saw a sail-boat beneath the cliff heading for the cove. Dr. 
 Percy leaped ashore, and hastily drawing up his boat, walked 
 over to where her husband was working. The two men 
 talked together for some time. She could see the Uttle doc- 
 tor's gesticulations and the characteristic mopping of his 
 round face with his handkerchief. Holden seemed to say 
 little, and at the end shaking his head turned back to his work. 
 Dr. Percy Ungered awhile, still talking, then slowly went 
 back to his boat and without even a glance upwards pushed 
 off and hoisted sail. 
 
 The young wife, watching this pantomime from her perch, 
 was curious to know what it meant. When her husband 
 came up for dinner, she looked inquiringly at him, and as he 
 said nothing, remarked: — 
 
 131 
 
132 THE HEALER 
 
 "Dr. Percy came over this morning." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Why didn't he come up to see me ?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 " He came for something ? " 
 
 "He wanted me to see that railroad man, Elport. He's 
 sick, and the ypung cub doesn't know what's the matter." 
 
 "Why didn't you go back with Dr. Percy?" 
 
 The reply came in an irritable flash. 
 
 " Let 'em take care of themselves ! I've got my own work 
 to do." 
 
 For a time she said nothing, somewhat aghast and silent, 
 not understanding this refusal of help by her husband, who 
 seemed to be at the call of every one. The work he was 
 doing below in the grove was common mason's labor for 
 which many a better hand might be hired for a few dollars. 
 She ventured timidly: — 
 
 "Is he very sick, Eric 1" 
 
 "How do I know? Your young friend seemed to think 
 so. But he knows nothing." 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 "Indigestion, the pup thought, acute indigestion. Prob- 
 ably been stuflBng himself for years and taking no exercise." 
 
 After dinner, as he was preparing to go back to the Spring, 
 she said: — 
 
 "You went to Temisko, twenty-five miles, in all that 
 storm last week, to see a half-breed ! " 
 
 "These are my people!" he exclaimed. "They have no 
 other helper. . . . Elport can send for whom he likes — " 
 
 "But it might be too late 1" 
 
THE HEALER 133 
 
 She looked at him significantly. That would have been 
 her fate, had he refused his aid to her. 
 
 "Let them keep out of the wilderness!" he burst forth. 
 "I'll have nothing to do with them, now or in the future. 
 They can build railroads and put up hotels — and hire their 
 own doctors when they get sick, too ! " 
 
 She smiled at his vehemence, as though she would say: — ■ 
 " Yet you took me from that world you seem to hate so." 
 
 "Eric!" she said, detaining him with her hands. "He 
 may be dangerously ill. You know what Dr. Percy is ! " 
 
 His stern lips softened with a little smile. 
 
 "Eric, you owe your gift — " 
 
 "Not to them!" 
 
 "To any one who needs it — you said so ! . . . What 
 would have happened if you had refused to come to me ? " 
 
 He frowned. 
 
 "Eric," she murmured, with a strange eagerness to win 
 this point and bend his will, "Mr. Elport was an old friend 
 of my father's. You will help him!" 
 
 He kissed her and went down the path without a word. 
 She hurried to the garden and hung over the ledge. Pres- 
 ently she saw him shove his canoe across the sand and jump 
 in. She waved her hand, a little smile on her lips, and she 
 watched the canoe until it was but a blur upon the blue lake. 
 
 That afternoon she could do nothing but pace restlessly to 
 and fro in the narrow circle of her garden, her heart beating 
 with a strange excitement. It was the first exercise of her 
 wifely power over the Wild One, — her first woman's triumph. 
 But that was not all. Dimly she perceived that unexpected 
 results might come from this chance circumstance where she 
 
134 THE HEALER 
 
 had influenced a man's will. In some unknown way, that 
 she could not yet imagine, it might affect her husband's 
 future and hence hers. Elport might be the link to bind 
 them to that outer world which her husband avoided, and 
 which she still felt akin to. 
 
 It was nightfall before the doctor returned. She waited 
 until he chose to speak of his errand. In time he said: — 
 
 "Your little doctor friend was doing his best to kill his 
 patient, — morphine, as usual." 
 
 "What's the matter with Mr. Elport?" 
 
 "A lot of things. He has pretty thoroughly knocked out 
 his machine with food and drink and foolish work." 
 
 "Will he die?" 
 
 "Not this time, if he takes care." 
 
 And later he let fall: — 
 
 "I've told him to come over here where I can look after 
 him ; I can't be running over to the Settlement every day, 
 and that pup isn't fit to be left with a sick cat." 
 
 "Here!" she exclaimed involuntarily. "Why doesn't he 
 take the Eyrie?" 
 
 "No, here," her husband said emphatically. "He can 
 sleep in a tent ; I'll teach him how to live like a sane man 
 and get something out of his life!" 
 
 She smiled at the thought of Horace Elport, with all his 
 worldly experience, being taught how to live by her Wild 
 Man. Her husband seemed imperturbably convinced of his 
 own methods. 
 
 So the next morning she helped make ready the tent, 
 which Gray Jack put up beneath a branching beech tree. As 
 she busied herself fetching the few articles that she thought 
 
THE HEALER 135 
 
 might add comfort to the distinguished guest, — even cutting 
 the first flowers from her garden to place beside his cot, — 
 she realized guiltily that she had done far less for the other 
 sick that the doctor had brought from time to time to the 
 Spring. Her husband, she believed, who paid no attention 
 to these preparations, must realize also her unwonted interest. 
 
 Towards noon the hotel launch puffed into the bay and 
 the invalid was taken on his cot to the tent. His man-servant 
 accompanied him, also Dr. Percy, who bustled about the 
 place fussily, evidently relieved to have another take the 
 responsibility of his distinguished patient. When the in- 
 valid had been made comfortable, the flaps of his tent drawn 
 back to admit the sweet summer breeze, he raised himself 
 feebly and looked out through the scattered trees to the blue 
 lake. 
 
 "A fellow ought to get well here," he said with a smile for 
 the doctor's wife, who still hung about him after her husband 
 had left. "If he can get well anywhere!" He closed his 
 tired eyes. 
 
 "Oh, Eric will cure you, I'm sure," she said confidently. 
 
 "You're convinced your husband can work miracles?" 
 he observed quizzically. 
 
 "Don't I know? He saved my life." 
 
 She touched the scar above her temple instinctively. 
 
 "That is proof," Elport said more seriously. "But he 
 probably thought your life was better worth saving than mine. 
 He needed it ! . . . Any way it is good to lie here under 
 a green tree and hear the leaves rustle instead of listening to 
 that piano in the hotel all day. It's better than fishing — or 
 building railroads, eh ? " 
 
136 THE HEALER 
 
 "Perhaps you won't want to build your railroad after Eric 
 has got hold of you !" 
 
 "You mean he will use magic on me? Does he do things 
 like that ? He would have me come over here — or would 
 let me die in that hole by myself. And he wanted me to 
 leave Andrew behind ; let me have him for the first week — 
 for a week ! . . . I haven't done without him in twenty 
 years. . . . Well, it's good to be here any way." 
 
 The new patient gave a touch of excitement to the young 
 woman's life. Every morning and afternoon she visited 
 him in his tent, finding little things to do for him, read- 
 ing to him, chatting with him, and writing his letters for 
 him. At the end of the week the man-servant went back to 
 the hotel, and the sick man was content to have him go, for 
 he was sitting up and buoyantly expected to return to the city 
 in a few days. Meantime he dawdled about the new build- 
 ing, scoffing at the labors of the doctor and old Gray Jack. 
 
 "He's a good enough stone-mason, yoiu- husband," he said 
 to the wife. "I'll give him all of three dollars a day if he'll 
 come across the Lake and work for me on the railroad. Look 
 at him take a chunk off that stone with his mallet. And 
 he threatens to make me work, too ! " 
 
 Holden, unmindful of this banter, worked steadily at the 
 stone wall of his new building, which had already got breast 
 high. 
 
 "Where is this healing fountain — magic water butt?" 
 the railroad man asked presently. "He gives me the water 
 to drink — it's very vile ! " 
 
 Helen showed him the Healing Spring. Elport sat on the 
 rock beside the green pool and gazed at it thoughtfully. 
 
THE HEALER 137 
 
 " Looks sort of devilish, doesn't it ? " he commented. " But 
 I guess it must be the doctor who works the charm, don't 
 you think ? Gray Jack was telling me this morning what he 
 had done for him — and that poor old creature up in the 
 cabin, — he's kept her alive by sheer will." 
 
 The young wife glowed with happy pride. Even if she 
 had defied her world, with careless indifference to its judg- 
 ment, it was sweet to have her justification sound from the 
 lips of one that world would respect. 
 
 "He has the gift, all right," Elport observed after a time. 
 
 "The gift?" 
 
 "The gift of healing, yes ! . . . It's about the greatest 
 of all the gifts — and the rarest, much rarer than the artist's 
 gift they make so much of, or the gift of getting money — 
 that's about the commonest of all ! Even I have that. . . . 
 And he's content to hide his gift away off here in this wilder- 
 ness. But we won't let him do that, will we, madam ? " He 
 turned to her with twinkling eyes, as if to include her in a 
 conspiracy he purposed. "We'll publish him, exploit him — 
 discover him to the world — make a great man of him ! " 
 
 " I don't think Eric wants that," she said doubtfully. 
 
 "Oh, yes, he will want it," Elport retorted confidently. 
 "Every man likes his fame when he can get it. Never saw 
 one yet who refused it." 
 
 "But Eric is — so different from other men," the wife 
 said doubtfully. " You would nyver get him out of his wil- 
 derness." 
 
 "Then I'll build my railroad in to him," Elport flashed back 
 in his quick way, "and bring the world to him." 
 
 They strolled back to the doctor. 
 
138 THE HEALER 
 
 "Your wife and I have been plotting against you," Elport 
 announced. 
 
 Holden looked at him with an ironical smile and continued 
 his work. Helen saw that the two men — so unhke in every 
 characteristic and experience — got on excellently. The 
 older man took hberties with her moody Wild One that she 
 would not dare to take herself, railed at him as medicine-man, 
 herb doctor, quack, and dared to dispute his will. This time 
 he persisted: — 
 
 "We're going to make you famous." 
 
 "Infamous, you mean," Holden growled. "A quack pure 
 and simple ! " 
 
 "Oh, well — what are you now? . . . And you don't 
 make it pay — as you should." 
 
 A scowl crossed the doctor's face. 
 
 "Yes, that's the whole thing — the pay ! And that's why 
 half of them are quacks — why they can't do more than 
 they do — they're working for the fee." 
 
 "Idealist! . . . Never mind, my dear," he said, turning 
 to the young wife, "we'll make him infamous, then; he 
 can't help himself, simply can't, when the thing is once 
 started!" 
 
 She laughed, amused, but more than a little stirred by the 
 light words of the railroad man. If it were true that her 
 husband had this great gift — and she never doubted it — 
 if in some way it could become known widely, — why, all 
 sorts of things would happen, beautiful and alluring things 
 that she had never considered before. For it never occurred 
 to her seriously that a "gift" was anything to be kept re- 
 served. Rather it was like a gold mine in one's private pas- 
 
THE HEALER 139 
 
 ture, from which the gold was to be dug straightway and 
 used. Of course ! 
 
 The next morning Elport was established trowel in hand 
 beside Gray Jack, working at the walls of the new camp 
 hospital. He waved his instrument cheerfully towards Helen 
 when she appeared on the scene. 
 
 "Your husband wants me to know how it feels to work with 
 my own hands. I tell him I carried a rod and chain in 
 Nebraska before he was born !" He gayly patted a stone 
 with his trowel. "But I'd rather pay a man now to stand 
 here in the sun and do the job for me while the doctor and 
 I went fishing." 
 
 "Oh, that'll come too," Holden called out indulgently. 
 
 The railroad man did not get away that week, nor the next. 
 He remained through the summer months, sleeping in his 
 tent under the beech tree, working on the new building, also 
 fishing and hunting with the doctor. Several times he ac- 
 companied Holden on his long trips into distant corners of 
 the wilds. The young wife noticed with pleased surprise 
 that the two men seemed to like each other's company, as 
 men of the most opposed experiences will. She thought that 
 the practical, worldly man might be helpful to her Wild One 
 in ways that he did not dream of. 
 
 Even after Elport was thoroughly estabhshed in health, — 
 ready once more for the battle as he himself said, — he stayed 
 on, or went away on business for short periods, only to return 
 to his tent and his corduroy costume. Sometimes Dr. Percy 
 came across the Lake, bringing with him men who had traced 
 the railroad man as far as the Settlement and there lost the 
 trail. Many an afternoon the young wife held her little 
 
140 THE HEALER 
 
 court around the tea cups in ber tiny garden, with the rail- 
 road man, the young doctor, sometimes an engineer or a man 
 from the city in attendance. To dispense her simple hospi- 
 tahty, to sit in her fragrant garden behind the vine-covered 
 cabin while the sun slanted over the Lake, and listen to the 
 talk of men, gave her much happiness. She was hardly con- 
 scious of the reason for her pleasure in this simple social 
 activity, but she felt it was the right and proper manner of 
 living. 
 
 Her husband rarely joined the group in the garden, busying 
 himself as long as there was daylight in his work about the 
 Spring. One August afternoon which she would long re- 
 member, however, the doctor came up from his work earlier 
 than usual. Elport had brought out a great roll of blue prints 
 and with their help was describing to her and Dr. Percy the 
 plans for his railroad. As he talked of these deeds to be done, 
 the imtamed spaces of the world to be conquered, his face 
 lighted with enthusiasm. The doctor came up behind him 
 noiselessly and looked over his shoulder at the map on which 
 the railroad man's fingers rested. 
 
 "We leave the main line at Savin's Mills, above the stage 
 road," he said, tracing the proposed course, "and follow the 
 river up through the valley until we strike the Lake just 
 below the Settlement — and that's the end for the present. 
 But another year we shall build on, by the east shore of the 
 Lake, cross over the divide at Trader's Pass, here, and get 
 into the Poltami district — there's gold over in there and a 
 lot of timber — well, that's enough for the present, isn't it ? " 
 
 "Ultimately," Dr. Percy joked, "you will aim for the 
 Pole?" 
 
THE HEALER 141 
 
 "Yes, calling on the way at Hudson's Bay with a spur 
 eastward for Labrador." 
 
 He looked up into Holden's moody eyes, and as if to an- 
 swer the criticism he read there, he added: — 
 
 " It will open up all this great territory north of the Lake 
 — get out the pulp wood, make farms in the forest. And as 
 for this Lake, hotels will spring up like huckleberries along 
 the shores when the railroad comes ! " 
 
 "And that's what you call development ! " Holden growled. 
 
 "Why, my dear doctor, we shall bring you patients by the 
 himdreds ! Instead of that stone cabin you have made me 
 sweat over, you will have a great hydropathic establishment 
 about your old Spring like those in England and Germany." 
 
 The doctor grunted moodily. 
 
 " No doubt ! There's plenty of rotting refuse of your 
 cities that would run here, or anywhere, if it became the 
 fashion. I don't want them." 
 
 "You'll be in touch with civiUzation, man. A night and 
 a day to New York — think of that ! It will please the 
 ladies, I know," he added with a smile for Helen. 
 
 The doctor merely shrugged his shoulders, while the others 
 laughed. 
 
 "I have spared your Spring from desecration — you see 
 the road will go the other side of the Lake." 
 
 "Thanks for so much consideration." 
 
 "That side naturally will develop first," Elport continued. 
 " Colonel Blake, your wife's uncle, owns most of this side and 
 the islands. It will be a great investment one of these days." 
 
 "That means nothing to us," the doctor replied with slow 
 emphasis. "This is the return you give me for making you 
 
142 THE HEALER 
 
 well ! . . . Better for us if I had left you in Percy's hands 
 — then there would have been small chance of your building 
 railroads this side of paradise." 
 
 "Many thanks, doctor !" the Uttle man murmured with a 
 rueful smile. Elport laughed. He refused to take Holden 
 seriously. 
 
 "The railroad would have come sooner or later any way — 
 and not much later. All the spruce on these hills is wanted 
 to make pulp paper. Besides, the country has great agricul- 
 tural possibihties. It must be opened up ! . . . The pres- 
 sure of population determines these movements, not the will 
 of one man. We are but the instruments for the work," he 
 concluded with a touch of whimsical fatalism. 
 
 "I wish this instrument had chosen some other spot for its 
 operations ! " the doctor grumbled. 
 
 " You will not say that five years hence, doctor, when this 
 wilderness outpost is the centre of human life, the Lake busy 
 with traffic — will he, Mrs. Holden?" 
 
 "I — I should like it," she stammered. 
 
 The doctor turned sharply away and after walking to and 
 fro in the little garden for a few moody moments, burst forth 
 passionately: — 
 
 "Development! What has your development done for 
 this country so far? It has brought the scum of human 
 labor here with their filth and disease and vice. It has cut 
 those great gashes in the forests !" He pointed to the broad 
 wounds on the slopes of Macatawa. "It will bring next a 
 crowd of idle money wasters, — they are already hanging 
 about the Settlement, corrupting the simple people that belong 
 here. And that you call civilization ! " 
 
THE HEALER 143 
 
 Elport and Dr. Percy laughed indulgently at the man's 
 passion. The railroad man began to roll up his map, saying: 
 
 "But you can no more prevent it than you could dam up 
 this lake with your own hands ! " 
 
 "Perhaps not," Holden retorted, still fiercely. "But I 
 can escape it, as I escaped it before ! I can go on — farther 
 into the peace of the wilderness, where evil cannot follow." 
 
 "And carry the Healing Spring with you?" the young 
 doctor asked. 
 
 " And carry your gift into the wilderness ? " the older man 
 added more searchingly. "Let it rust there, unused?" 
 
 "Better that than to sell it, as you would have me, to set 
 up a market here for the rich sick and sell them delusions at 
 so much a minute ! " 
 
 "Some day you will see the world differently," the older 
 man remarked quietly. And there the talk rested. When 
 Elport left with the little doctor, Helen sat silent, pondering 
 what had been said, while her husband gazed moodily at the 
 dark hills. Suddenly she demanded : — 
 
 "Why do you hate the world so, Eric ?" 
 
 The Idealist, thus accused, denied the charge : — 
 
 "I don't hate the world." 
 
 "Then why do you want to get away from it?" 
 
 "I hate the game men play with one another — what men 
 make of themselves in their world. . . . They try to turn 
 everything into money. Doctoring — healing the sick — 
 has become a trade ! Didn't I see enough of that when I 
 was at the medical school, and in the hospital? The big 
 men using their reputation to bleed their patients who were 
 rich enough to pay, and turning the poor over to boys like 
 
144 THE HEALER 
 
 that Percy to experiment with ! . . . And that's what El- 
 port wants me to do here, — run what he calls a ' hydropathic 
 establishment,' — gull the public with spring water ! 
 Wheedle the rich out of their money and coddle a lot of 
 old men and women who ought to die any way — or get 
 out and work for their living ! . . . I didn't come up here 
 into the woods for that. Let 'em play the quack in the 
 cities — " 
 
 "But," the wife protested, faltering, "the world is not all 
 selfish and bad like that ! " She touched his arm caressingly, 
 as if she would soften his angry mood. "And when one 
 loves," she whispered, "one loves the whole world, too, a 
 little." 
 
 Her sweet face, with the waving brown hair, was held 
 invitingly to his, but he turned away, — for the first time it 
 seemed to her, — and went off moodily into the woods. 
 Womanwise she felt hurt. She could not fathom her lover's 
 hermit nature. Why seek to hide his light under a bushel ? 
 Why avoid the good that hf e might bring to him ? He had 
 the wonderful gift of healing — so it seemed — and why not 
 use it, make it bear fruit, rich fruit? 
 
 She was all woman, with normal, healthy instincts, and she 
 did not understand the nature of those who have gifts — the 
 cloudy recesses of their spirits, where their power grows in 
 the dark. 
 
 The new camp-hospital was finished before Elport went. 
 He made a point of seeing the last details completed before 
 he left, and induced the doctor to bring from the Settlement 
 more workmen — carpenters and masons — so that the 
 
THE HEALER 145 
 
 interior of the building might be quickly finished. Helen 
 suspected that Elport had supplied the money for all this 
 outlay, inducing his difficult host thus to accept payment 
 for services generously rendered. 
 
 And the railroad man had planned a great surprise, the 
 secret of which the doctor's wife shared. Dr. Percy was sent 
 to the city to procure for the little hospital the best of modern 
 equipment, — everything that money might buy of appara- 
 tus. It was forwarded to the Settlement in great boxes, and 
 one night Dr. Percy, Elport, and Gray Jack installed it in the 
 new building. The next morning Helen followed her hus- 
 band to the Spring, — a little fearful how he might take the 
 fairy gifts, — to enjoy his surprise. When she reached the 
 low stone building she heard within the genial laughter of 
 men. The Wild One, evidently, had taken the better part 
 and accepted the gift as it was meant, — merely joking in 
 his grim fashion. 
 
 "I see you would make me a quack and turn the camp into 
 a health resort, with all the up-to-date tricks for fooHng 
 the sick. But I'll never let one of your kind lie on those nice 
 beds ! I'll fill 'em with lumber jacks and dirty half-breeds, 
 or they can stay empty." 
 
 Dr. Percy made a wry face, but Elport remarked 
 easily : — 
 
 " I don't care what you do with them — they'll come in 
 handy one of these days." 
 
 Helen could see that her Wild One was more pleased than 
 he admitted with the neat iron cots, the wheeled chairs, the 
 operating table, and glistening instruments. 
 
 "Now for the baths !" he remarked. "They could be 
 
146 THE HEALER 
 
 added at the back in an ell, and the water easily piped down 
 from the Spring." 
 
 Elport looked at Helen with a smile. 
 
 "I see that will be my next job when I come back in the 
 spring !" 
 
 Then they closed the neat new building, with its little row 
 of six beds opposite the long southerly windows, and all four 
 went up to the stone house where Helen and Gray Jack pre- 
 pared a festival dinner of trout and partridge and venison in 
 honor of the day. 
 
 "Here is another good thing from the city!" Dr. Percy 
 murmured aside to Helen, as he skilfully manipulated the 
 cork of a fat wine bottle. 
 
VI 
 
 On a crisp, clear day at the end of October Elport departed, 
 taking with him the young doctor. The railroad man was 
 exuberant with new vitality, and gay as a boy about to jour- 
 ney to an imknown city. 
 
 "You'll see me again !" he declared. "I'll come back to 
 you on my railroad — and I'll boom your old Healing Spring 
 in my folders, in spite of you, hermit !" 
 
 They paddled their guests to the stage landing at the lower 
 end of the Lake, The trees along the water's edge had lost 
 their leaves. A gusty wind from the northwest the night 
 before had stripped their branches and piled the withered 
 leaves in the thickets. Under the hard blue sky the earth 
 seemed bare and cold, as if prepared for the long winter. 
 
 The grading for the new railroad had reached the Landing, 
 and the dump cars perched on the crest of a long "fill" gave 
 the young woman a strange thrill. Thej^ were the symbol 
 of the activity of the great world without the wilderness. 
 Elport pointed proudly to the grade. 
 
 "We've almost got to you, doctor I" 
 
 The two men were left at the wharf with their luggage. 
 After riding in a rough wagon for a few miles they would be 
 met by a special train over the new track and complete, in a 
 couple of hours, the toilsome journey that took the stage a 
 whole day. 
 
 147 
 
148 THE HEALER 
 
 The young woman's eyes filled with involuntary tears as 
 she waved a last farewell to Elport, who stood on the log 
 wharf and jeered at the doctor as long as his voice would 
 carry across the water. She wondered at the indifference 
 her husband displayed at parting with these two friendly 
 comrades with whom they had spent so many weeks of happy 
 living. He seemed quite content to have them go, as if he 
 wished to possess his wilderness alone, with her and old Gray 
 Jack. . . . 
 
 As they entered the Cove, the new building greeted them 
 with its row of large glistening windows that reflected the 
 setting sun. Under the bare branches of the great beech 
 trees it sat square and firm and unadorned. The grove that 
 had been filled with life these past weeks seemed empty, 
 deserted. For the first time in many months there happened 
 to be no patients at the Spring. The last invalid — the sick 
 woman — had gone back to her people the week before. 
 The empty cabins, the tent that Elport had occupied, seemed 
 like forlorn shells of the summer's active life. 
 
 Holden closed the windows and doors of the new building 
 and put the keys in his pocket. Then they climbed the steep 
 path to their home. The doctor did not feel apparently the 
 cessation of activity that oppressed her, — did not miss even 
 the presence of the sick he had labored for. Had he lost inter- 
 est in his work? Or was he willing merely to accept the 
 period of quiescence before renewed action ? . . . To her it 
 seemed as if the bonds that tied her to her old world had been 
 severed afresh by the going of the two men. She was restless 
 and a little lonely. . . . Holden brought in a great bundle 
 of fire-wood and threw it down on the hearth. 
 
THE HEALER 149 
 
 "We shall need a good fire to-night," he said cheerily. 
 "The wind is getting up again." 
 
 There was a light in his eyes as he suddenly turned to her 
 with outstretched hands. 
 
 " We've been too busy to Uve this summer, little one — 
 all the work and people about — but now the winter is com- 
 ing. That's the real time — we'll live ! And first we must 
 get ready. I'll clothe you in furs, my woman, from head to 
 foot. You'll be like the russet leaves under the snow !" 
 
 There was joy in his voice, as if all these busy weeks he had 
 been looking forward to the still, lonely winter time when they 
 two — complete comrades — would at last find happiness 
 in their love. His longing for her, his passionate worship of 
 her, which had been held in check by the duties of the summer, 
 were now given free rein. And transformed by this won- 
 drous flame of his passion, she lost her sense of loneliness. 
 She smiled back at him. 
 
 "We shall be very.happy !" she said. 
 
 Thus began for these lovers the one wonderful winter of 
 their lives in the unbroken solitude of storm and snow-clogged 
 forest. At first they were busy all day with preparations for 
 the long winter to come. Holden and some choppers had 
 prepared a huge pile of fire-wood which girdled the north 
 side of the stone cabin to the eaves and stretched out across 
 the dead garden. A few days after the departure of their 
 guests a gray blanket of cloud slowly filled the blue sky. 
 It gathered imperceptibly, in deep calm, and by evening 
 had closed in the earth with a dull, oppressive cover. There 
 was the brooding sense of change in the damp air. 
 
150 THE HEALER 
 
 That morning the doctor with his men had gone in the 
 largest boat to fetch from the stage landing the last of the 
 winter's supplies that had been brought for them by the 
 freighters. 
 
 "We shall have snow before night I expect," Holden had 
 said as he left in the early morning. "I'll try to get back by 
 noon." But noontime came, and there was no sign of the 
 boat. Late in the afternoon when the young wife went to the 
 door, she saw the first flakes of snow drifting silently, un- 
 certainly out of the sky. They fell here and there upon 
 the bulky woodpile, slowly peppering it with white powder. 
 She went back into the house and busied herself. When 
 she looked out again, the sky was dark with the falling snow, 
 — fine, steady, persistent. It had already drifted in a little 
 ridge before the door. It fell like a sheet between the win- 
 dows and the Lake, cutting off all view. She returned to the 
 empty room and heaped fresh wood on the dying fire. For 
 the first time a sense of human isolation in the woods came 
 over her. She was shut away in this small stone house from 
 all the living world by the impalpable wall of snow. She 
 heaped more wood on the fire until the crackling logs and 
 glowing coals made a ruddy light on the gray walls. Then 
 she drew the settle closer to the fire and lay there waiting. 
 
 By nightfall when she went out for wood, the snow was 
 like a thick carpet, mantling the woodpile and the roof of the 
 cabin, covering the firs. And still it fell, like a thick veil 
 between her and the outer world. She was too restless to 
 eat, to work. She thought that the men must have decided 
 when the storm came on to spend the night at the Landing 
 instead of attempting the blind journey of eight nailes up the 
 
THE HEALER 151 
 
 Lake through the snow. Nevertheless, when it was quite 
 dark she lighted the great reflector lantern and putting on a 
 cloak set out down the chff path for the shore below. She 
 stumbled, but she arrived safely, the lantern still burning, and 
 after some difficulty found the pole in the centre of the curving 
 shore and set the light on it. In trjdng to place it firmly on 
 the rest, the heavy lantern slipped from her numb fingers and 
 fell into the snow. The light went out. She had forgotten 
 to bring any matches with her, and for a while she stood 
 shivering, wondering what she should do, afraid of the white 
 silence about her. 
 
 Then the thought of her husband out in the storm, striving 
 to discover the shore fine, spurred her to new efforts. Leav- 
 ing the lantern she gathered her cloak close about her and 
 started for the stone house, this time taking the easier path 
 by the Spring. She plunged into the gloom of the trees, 
 floundering, trying to find some landmark that would assure 
 her of the way. She came to a corner of the new building, 
 veered off towards the brook, followed this to the basin where 
 the healing water still steamed through the snow, sending off 
 its acrid, sulphurous smell. She feared it ! Groping among 
 the snowy branches of the firs she found the path once more 
 and slowly plodded up to the level above, and thus home. 
 Pausing only to put a light in her chamber window and get 
 another lantern she once more set out for the shore. 
 
 Her body trembled with weariness, but she pressed on, 
 possessed with the thought that she might be helping him — 
 her master — who was adrift there in the impalpable, whirl- 
 ing desert of snow. She found the heavy lantern already 
 softly buried in a drift, shook off the snow, lighted it, and 
 
152 THE HEALER 
 
 this time succeeded in placing it securely upon its stand, 
 turning the reflector towards the Lake. Its beams, which 
 had seemed to her so powerful in the house, cast a feeble 
 glimmer into the whirling dance of snowflakes. 
 
 Then she leaned against the post, weary and disheartened 
 by her futile efforts to light the snowy world, Ustening to the 
 fine flutter of the myriad flakes as they settled to rest. At 
 her feet was the motionless water, — an inert, black mass 
 into which the white particles drove down, as to a magnet, 
 and at the touch were lost. The thing hypnotized her, — 
 this incessant shower of white specks disappearing in the 
 black gulf. It seemed for the moment symbolic of the whole 
 spiiming universe. 
 
 With an effort she wrenched her mind from this deadening 
 contemplation, and again her thought went back to the boat 
 struggUng upon the water — to her husband. If he should 
 be lost — if anything should happen to him ! It seemed 
 inconceivable, as if some great force would be put out. Far 
 away from her, out in the void of the dark storm, he appeared 
 to her as this force, — a will that must exist and work its 
 way. In spite of their intimacy, of his flaming love and wor- 
 ship of her, she felt herself a weak and a little thing compared 
 with him. His must be a great end — and she was proud ! 
 
 If anything should happen to him this night, she would 
 be utterly alone in a dark world. Suddenly she felt totally 
 isolated in the drifting snow, lost, and she was filled with 
 dread. It was as if she had ventured alone with her lover to 
 some remote end of the earth, and now he had left her. . . . 
 
 From this black consciousness she was aroused by a faint 
 shout. She must have slept, she thought. Clinging to the 
 
THE HEALER 153 
 
 post she stared into the whirling atoms above her head, 
 and slowly out of the darkness a bulky shadow loomed up. 
 Soon she could make out the lines of the boat with its burden 
 of snow-covered barrels and boxes, and then the figures 
 of the two men rowing, and standing above them, large and 
 commanding, her husband, his mackinaw coated with snow. 
 As the boat grounded he leaped ashore and ran to her, catch- 
 ing her in his arms. 
 
 "You here ! How long have you been waiting in the 
 storm?" he asked in a hoarse, tremulous voice. 
 
 "I thought you might be dead," she whispered, "out 
 there in the dark ! " 
 
 He carried her up the path to the house, and placed her 
 before the fire. He told her that the men were for staying 
 at the Landing when the snow came on before they had 
 finished loading the boat, but that he had insisted on setting 
 out, knowing that she would be alone and might fear. They 
 had made a slow journey back, feeling their way along the 
 shore, bewildered by the storm, and if it had not been for 
 the feeble glimmer from the reflector which he had detected 
 through the swirling dance of snow, they would doubtless 
 have drifted on into the open water of the upper Lake, and 
 not found themselves until daylight and clear weather. 
 
 "Then I have been of use !" she sighed with satisfaction, 
 clinging to him while the melting snow made pools on the 
 hearth. 
 
 "Use!" he cried. "The light upon the path!" he 
 chanted. "Meaning and end of life." 
 
 "No, not that," she said. "Just a servant with a light 
 for her master." 
 
154 THE HEALER 
 
 "A servant!" he protested. . . . 
 
 "We are so much together, now," she murmured, falling to 
 sleep in his arms. "There is nothing that can ever come be- 
 tween us, is there ? " 
 
 "Nothing, in all the world !" her lover answered. 
 
 This pecuUar sense of a close bond, intimacy and depend- 
 ence, hung about her the next days while the snow continued 
 to filter down upon the earth in its persistent, stealthy 
 fashion. Now and then the wind would rise and swirl the 
 flakes over the roof of the stone house Uke fine sand, but 
 for the most part it fell quietly out of the gray sky, hour 
 after hour. When Holden had to go to the camp below, she 
 insisted upon making the trip with him. " I must do every- 
 thing as you do it," she said. The camp was an eerie field 
 of strange mounds and shapes. The laden boat drawn up 
 on the shore was already a huge bank of snow. The men, 
 snugly housed in one of the cabins, were contentedly lying 
 beside the hot stove, smoking. As nothing could be done 
 while the storm lasted, husband and wife ploughed their 
 way back to their snowy nest. Holden got out a pair of 
 snow-shoes he was making for his wife and went to work, 
 while she cut moccasins from soft deer skin as he had taught 
 her to do. The feeble daylight faded early. The doctor 
 heaped more wood upon the fire. Now and then they 
 looked up from their work and smiled at each other across 
 the table, the same consciousness of peace and happiness 
 in their isolation — solitude that was not loneliness — filling 
 them both. 
 
 "How good it is !" she exclaimed. 
 
THE HEALER 155 
 
 "This is what I saw a year ago, when you were running 
 about Europe and describing the Pyramids," he replied, and 
 he told her a little of his lonely days spent in his cabin in 
 the valley of the Seven Lakes, or here in a rough shelter 
 tent while he was working on this stone house. She could 
 see that for all his hermit nature — his love of the wilderness 
 and remote places — manlike he had been lonely all his hfe, 
 desiring his mate, longing to love. Now he was content. 
 
 "It has just begun," she murmured, caressing his rough 
 neck with her soft hand. "There'll be months and months 
 hke this." 
 
 She understood now his apparent indifference at losing 
 their friends. He saw in his imagination this quiet room, 
 buried in the snows, as he had seen it really all his life. He 
 wanted her alone, Hke this, with the egotism of the young 
 male. He had carried her away from all the world for this ! 
 It was the sort of jealous passion that woman most realizes 
 and which most satisfies her egotism, when it is fresh and 
 full of poetic fervor. So as she caressed her Wild One, she 
 dreamed of the long winter nights when they would be by 
 themselves in complete intimacy, of the short days full of 
 comradely duties. And she forgot the railroad man with his 
 pleasant manner, little Dr. Percy, and all the people and 
 things she had abandoned. 
 
 He laughed boyishly, as he threw aside the snow-shoes 
 and took her in his arms. 
 
 "Not bad our life? . . . Content, eh, my little woman? 
 . . . The less you have, the more you live — see !" 
 
 "When one loves," she added. 
 
 " Ah, when one loves — " . . . 
 
156 THE HEALER 
 
 They woke the next morning in a dazzUng brilliance of 
 light. Outside the world was marvellously transformed 
 into a glowing, diamonded whiteness. The blue sky seemed 
 almost black, and the black growth of spruce and fir on the 
 hills was purple against the broad background of pure snow. 
 
 "It's Uke a thousand Christmases all at the same time !" 
 Helen cried with the joy of a child, running from window 
 to door to peer out into the new world. 
 
 Before they had their breakfast, Holden had to tie on 
 her new snow-shoes, and they played in the snow that day 
 like children, until he was obliged to go after the supphes 
 left in the boat. That evening they arranged the last details 
 of the winter order in their close quarters, placing barrels 
 and boxes and tables where everything would be at hand 
 and serviceable. At bedtime she was weary with the 
 bustle and excitement of the day. When her husband went 
 out to bring in the wood for the night, she followed him, and 
 arm in arm they made their way to the cliff edge and stood 
 there above the steep snowy precipice, looking down into 
 the Lake, now silvered over with its first coat of ice. And 
 beyond everything was the stai'ry splendor of the northern 
 night. The familiar hills seemed to have withdrawn, spac- 
 ing the night majestically, in this broad wilderness. The 
 silent earth ! Save for a dot of firehght from the cabin below 
 there was not a sign of human Ufe in all the mysterious space 
 beneath the stars. Men, like the animals, were hidden 
 away in their warm burrows. Alone, the two looked forth 
 upon the silent world. 
 
 Behind them the little stone house was covered with a 
 thick white fur that curled over the low eaves to the wood- 
 
THE HEALER 157 
 
 pile, except where the windows were hollowed out like shin- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 "Could the world be more lovely or life richer!" the 
 woman thought, holding tightly to the man, her heart beat- 
 ing joyously. "And it will be like this always, forever and 
 ever — all our lives long, with him and with me. For we 
 have found the one perfect thing on earth — complete love !" 
 
 Far out upon the Lake the fresh ice cracked, muffled re- 
 ports shooting back and forth among the hills. She shivered 
 as if a mocking voice had answered her exaltation. Her 
 husband drew her closer, and led her within the warm house. 
 
VII 
 
 So it went for a month and more, this wonderful playtime 
 of the lovers in the snowy wilderness. Days seemed never 
 to have been so full and glorious as these, and never again 
 could such perfect ones come, bringing with them the same 
 supernal glow of joy. To wander among the firs in the fine 
 dry air, swept by the storms, was like breathing the ether 
 of the gods. It fired mind and body to their fullest action. 
 The young wife laughed and sang, danced in the snow, and 
 teased her Wild One with a thousand tricks, like a sprite 
 released from the dumb forest. They made skis and plunged 
 over the cliff in wild glissades to the frozen Lake, and the 
 doctor talked of contriving an ice-boat with which to explore 
 the Lake. 
 
 "You'll have nothing to do all winter," she said after a 
 month had passed with no call from outside. "Nobody 
 can get sick here ! They'll forget you. Healer, — you and 
 your Spring and your miracles." 
 
 He smiled lazily, as she flung this back over her shoulder, 
 and watched her lithe motions on the long smooth skis. 
 
 "If pure air and water and food could keep men well, 
 the world would have been free from sickness long ago," he 
 replied. 
 
 "What makes one well — what is the secret ?" she asked 
 lightly. 
 
 158 
 
THE HEALER 159 
 
 "To become like you !" he replied. 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 "Adjusted to life — at peace with oneself," he said more 
 gravely. 
 
 She paused in her flight, pondered, and then said: — 
 
 "I must be on the very pinnacle — poised at the summit 
 of my being !" 
 
 "We both live on the heights. Come ! " 
 
 They plunged over the cliff to the little cove beneath. 
 
 Late one afternoon in December their snowy paradise 
 was invaded by a huge creature on snow-shoes. His fur 
 cap was pulled over his face so that only his blond moustache, 
 frozen into a piece of ice, was visible. He wore thick woollen 
 leggings and had great leather mittens on his hands. 
 
 "What's the matter?" the doctor asked, hailing him. 
 
 "There's a man sick in a cabin over beyond the North 
 Fork Carry — he's bad, too ! " 
 
 Helen listened, with a sudden fear, as if the snowy hulk 
 were a messenger from the outside sent by some malignant 
 god to mar her perfect happiness. As her husband entered 
 the house to make ready to go back with the man, she 
 said: — 
 
 "You will take me with you ?" 
 
 "It is too far," he replied. "And I may have to spend 
 the night." 
 
 Nevertheless she tied on her snow-shoes. 
 
 "I'll go a little way," she said, "up the Lake." 
 
 So they set forth in single file on the white floor of the 
 Lake, which was traced with the broad track that the messen- 
 
160 THE HEALER 
 
 ger had made. When they entered the woods at the head 
 of the Lake, Helen was still at her husband's heels. He did 
 not suggest that she turn back, and proud of her skill and 
 endurance, she kept close to the men on the trail, weaving 
 in and out over the cut-over land, by little frozen streams, 
 under the laden branches of tall firs, until, as it became dusk, 
 they reached the hut, loosely thrown together of dead logs, 
 such as she had often come across in their wanderings through 
 the woods — the temporary homes of those fatal green cater- 
 pillars that eat up the forests. She waited outside while 
 the doctor was within. She could hear through the log 
 wall the sharp staccato tones of the sick man, who seemed 
 to be in deUrium and mistook the doctor for some marauder. 
 After a time the doctor came out, and binding on his snow- 
 shoes, gave directions to the man who had brought him, 
 then set out on the homeward trail, silently. 
 
 " Is he very ill ? " she asked. 
 
 "He will die," the plodding figure ahead of her answered 
 grimly. 
 
 "Can't you do anything for him?" 
 
 " Not now — it is too late. He's been lying there in fever 
 ever since the storm last Wednesday, alone." 
 
 The white wilderness, it seemed, hid its tragedies in its 
 silent depths. Without words they padded rhythmically 
 over the frozen surface of the Lake. It was a wide white 
 sea, in which they could distinguish merely the track just 
 before their eyes. Suddenly out of the dusk the cliffs about 
 the Cove loomed up ahead, and the light she had set in her 
 bedroom when they left glimmered above them. 
 
 "To-morrow I must go over to the lumber company's 
 
THE HEALER 161 
 
 office at the Settlement," the doctor remarked. "They 
 have no business to leave a man alone to die like a rat in his 
 hole!" 
 
 She felt that the play days of unearthly beauty and joyous 
 freedom were over. Even in the winter fastnesses of the 
 north many strands of life bound the world together. . . . 
 
 Thereafter on the doctor's expeditions she went always, 
 hardy and skilled. When he urged her to remain behind, 
 for fear that the journey would be too long or that she 
 would be compelled to spend the night in some uncomfortable 
 camp, she begged to go, and mindful of that time when she 
 had waited for him through the storm on the shore, he yielded. 
 
 They would go by sleigh or sledge, more often on skis or 
 snow-shoes, over those winding trails that he seemed to divine 
 instinctively beneath a fresh layer of snow, as the animals 
 know their routes. They were silent journeys, with fur 
 caps pulled down over their faces to protect them from the 
 bitter blasts that swept the level surfaces, threatening to 
 brush the human forms into the fantastic drifts. They 
 plodded at a slow pace, she close behind his bulky figure, 
 taking his ample track with her smaller shoe. In these 
 silent journeys through the dark forests, over the glit- 
 tering hills, the woman was nearer the man, even than 
 during the fire-lighted evenings in her home or the silent 
 nights in her chamber, with the winds whirling the drifted 
 snow over their refuge. Thus following in his footsteps 
 through the unbroken wastes, she seemed to herself part of 
 his will, his purpose, and was content to be so, not question- 
 ing the journey's end, the worth of his purpose, — content 
 to see his broad gray shoulders in the old mackinaw, his 
 
 M 
 
162 THE HEALER 
 
 worn sldn cap pulled close over his head, — proud of his 
 steady stride, relying absolutely upon his sure instinct for 
 the untrodden road. 
 
 Once they were tried in an adventure that came near 
 disaster. In making the round of certain lumber camps 
 above the third carry, they had been delayed, and as the 
 wan sunshine of the February day faded into a sullen gray- 
 ness they found themselves a long distance from home. 
 They had started that morning at sunrise, and in spite of 
 intervals of rest and one ride in a sledge, she was unex- 
 pectedly weary when finally they turned to face the home- 
 ward journey. The camp boss at the last stop urged them 
 to spend the night there. 
 
 "It'll likely snow before you reach the Lake," he said. 
 
 " Do you want to ? " her husband asked her, and though 
 she was weary, knowing his desire to get back to his home, 
 not much inclined herself to spend a night in an ill-ventilated 
 lumber cabin, she said blithely: — 
 
 "Oh, we can do it in a few hours — you said there was a 
 short cut over the mountain to the Lake." 
 
 "Through the vallej' of the Seven Lakes," he said, nodding. 
 And with another glance at the graying dusk they set out. 
 Already before they reached the fork in the path the snow 
 had begun to fall desultorily, a few small flakes sifting out 
 of the chill heavens. With another look at the dull spot of 
 light in the sky where the sun was, and a glance about the 
 narrow valley with its ice-bound brook, as if to reassure 
 himself of old landmarks, the doctor started on. Their 
 way led now up the brook, which was heavily covered with 
 branching firs that kept out all light. The snow fell more 
 
THE HEALER 163 
 
 steadily, filtering in through the branches, clogging their 
 shoes. 
 
 For the first time, she found it difficult to keep up with her 
 husband's long stride. It seemed to her that he was forc- 
 ing the pace, always looking about anxiously for marks 
 whenever the trees opened enough to admit more of the un- 
 certain twilight. The going was rougher now, and over 
 fallen timber that concealed deep holes. She fell once, but 
 suppressing the instinctive cry for help extricated herself. 
 Her husband was almost out of sight in the forest gloom 
 when she got on her feet, — she hurried on ! 
 
 They came out upon the summit of a steep hill 
 where through a draw the wind had swept the earth bare. 
 Holden had paused and was peering into the thick falling 
 snow, as if he expected to find something, then shook his 
 head. 
 
 "Come !" he said sharply. "We must try it, any way 1" 
 
 She rose wearily from the snow-drift into which she had 
 sunk, and pushed on. Her heart beat loudly and her breath 
 choked her. Would this wracking journey through the 
 white snow never end ? For the first time it seemed to her 
 that her husband had forgotten her, was unmindful of her 
 weakness; with set teeth she followed on doggedly, deter- 
 mined that the cry of woman's feebleness should not call 
 his attention to her. 
 
 Already he had plunged down the steep descent, half 
 sliding, slipping, and stood waiting at the bottom. She let 
 herself slide, careless of rock and tree, and rolled to the 
 bottom. As she floundered to her feet she heard him say 
 hoarsely: — 
 
164 THE HEALER 
 
 " It looks as if there were a lake here — we must make 
 better time !" He disappeared into the shadow caused by 
 the curtain of falling snow. The separation of a few feet 
 made his figure vague, distant. The ground was more 
 level above the ice, but the footing was softer. And through 
 this thick, powdery substance that clogged her feet she 
 followed in what seemed to her an interminable nightmare. 
 She strove to keep the vaguely looming form ahead of her 
 within sight, to overtake it so that she might cry out, to 
 save herself from falling. It was a trackless sea of snow, 
 silent, boundless, — nothing before or behind but a gray 
 curtain of fine snow. At long intervals her husband paused 
 to glance sharply at the dull band of light behind them, 
 which was supposed to be the west. Soon even this doubtful 
 radiance sank into the universal grayness of the storm. 
 The heavy footprints of the man's shoes sifted full at once, 
 blurring the track. She made another desperate effort to 
 keep the mechanical motion of her feet in his long track. 
 It was almost dark. Gradually the pain subsided, the acute 
 sensation of weariness and the sharp desire for the end. 
 There would be no end ! They would go on like this all 
 night, forever, mechanically moving through the white 
 waste. The vague figure ahead became to her colossal, 
 fantastically snow-encrusted. She knew that it was her 
 husband, felt his presence rather than saw him. At last 
 she was no longer conscious of this presence — she was alone ! 
 With a little cry she sank to the soft floor in a heap. . . . 
 
 When her eyes opened, her husband was holding her in 
 his arms, chafing her face with his bare hands. 
 
 "No more," she whispered, "I can't do more !" 
 
THE HEALER 165 
 
 The particles of snow stung her eyes and face hke hot steel. 
 Without a word Holden took her in his arms, resting her on 
 his shoulder, and carried her what seemed to her numb senses 
 a long way, then laid her upon a soft bed. A branch dropped 
 its burden of snow upon her bare face, and so she knew 
 that she was not in her bed, as she had thought ; but they 
 must have left that trackless waste, were now in the shelter 
 of the trees. Her husband was busily digging with a snow- 
 shoe and tramping down the loose snow all about the hole 
 that he made. Soon he had a fire going, and when she 
 lazily opened her eyes again she could see the great black 
 trunks of the protecting spruces, and the sheltering branches 
 above her head. 
 
 "All right?" he asked, perceiving her open eyes. "We'll 
 stay the night here." 
 
 "Yes," she murmured, again closing her eyes, content, 
 but vaguely conscious of having proved inadequate. It was 
 good to lie there upon the soft bed of snow, while the fire slowly 
 sputtered and crackled into life. She was willing to lie there 
 forever without another effort, even though the snow should 
 drift down faster and faster over her warm body, covering her 
 in the burrow that her husband had made for her. Why 
 had this terrible lassitude come over her ? Inadequate — the 
 woman ! Never a mate for a man — always falling in his 
 wake helpless. In this drowsy half-consciousness she was 
 dimly aware of the man sitting hunched up on his ankles with 
 a white drift behind him, crouching over the fire, feeding it 
 with branches of dry wood. He seemed thinner, more gaunt 
 than she remembered, slighter than the figure she had fol- 
 lowed all these hours. Then as she fell asleep she saw merely 
 
166 THE HEALER 
 
 the wide white sea of snow and herself a lonely figure, plod- 
 ding over it. . . . 
 
 At daylight her eyes opened upon her husband, seated as 
 she had dreamed the night before, crouched upon his ankles, 
 his head fallen forward on his arms, asleep. The dead ashes 
 of the fire lay between them. He had taken off his thick 
 mackinaw and wrapped it about her body and head. 
 
 "Eric !" she called, and he started, confused. 
 
 "I must have fallen asleep." 
 
 He shook himself, thrashing his numbed arms, and blew 
 the fire into flame. 
 
 "Luckily," he said, looking up to the cloudless sky, "it 
 has stopped snowing, or we might stay here until we starved 
 — I have no idea where we are !" 
 
 After they had warmed themselves and thawed out their 
 snow-shoes, they left their hole beneath the snow-laden 
 trees and ploughed their way back to the Lake. On its 
 smooth surface they could see the faint, sunken, irregular 
 line which indicated their circling course of the night before. 
 Holden, after carefully scanning it, said : — 
 
 "We must have come back a good way on our track." 
 
 "Do you know where we are?" 
 
 " The upper reach of Fallon Sound ; I know it well — I 
 used to live over there behind that hill." 
 
 "I don't recognize the place," she said, glancing at the 
 unfamihar hills about the Lake. 
 
 "You have never been here before." 
 
 She remembered then that whenever in their expeditions 
 she had asked him to take her to the valley of the Seven 
 Lakes and show her where he had once lived, he had always 
 put her off, saying merely : — 
 
THE HEALER 167 
 
 " It's a dreary place — an evil place. I never want to 
 see it again!" Surmising that it held bitter memories of 
 struggle and defeat, she had not pressed him. She herself 
 liked the bright places of life, quickly turned her back upon 
 gloomy spots where there was no joy. ... So in this chill, 
 dreary morning after the storm she merely glanced at the 
 unfamiliar scene, with desire to hasten to her own warm 
 nest. 
 
 "Can you walk?" he asked. "It is i^ot far now, and we 
 had best get over the Lake before the snow softens." 
 
 She moved stiflBiy, dragging her legs as if they were 
 weighted. All her suppleness of limb, her elasticity of youth, 
 seemed to have left her overnight. She was an inert and 
 numb creature. 
 
 "It's been too much for you !" he cried reproachfully, put- 
 ting his arm beneath hers to steady her. 
 
 "Something's the matter with me — there's no strength 
 left in me !" 
 
 Tears started in her eyes. 
 
 "We'll take it slowly — it's only a short way." 
 
 Nevertheless the journey in the dazzling brilliance of the 
 cloudless morning over the level floor of the Lake seemed end- 
 less. They plodded slowly, his arm sustaining hers, pausing 
 now and then to breathe the sharp air, to wipe the perspira- 
 tion from their faces. The gentle breeze sweeping up from 
 the southwest caught little wisps of snow from the flat sur- 
 face and dashed it in their faces. 
 
 When at last they reached the stone house in the cliff, 
 she threw herself upon the couch before the hearth, utterly 
 exhausted, while he made the fire and got some food ready. 
 
168 THE HEALER 
 
 "My play days are over," she murmured to herself sadly. 
 "Something has happened to me." 
 
 And in a little while she knew what had overtaken her. 
 She was to have a child. The first languorous inactivity, 
 announcing the peculiar preoccupation of her body, had come 
 upon her out on the frozen Lake, in the sea of whirling snow. 
 A child — that was an event that she had not reckoned upon ! 
 
VIII 
 
 Winter held on steadily for another six weeks, well into 
 April. All this time the young wife was housed for the most 
 part, — moving from her chamber to the larger room and 
 back again, or lying through stormy days on the deerskin 
 couch before the fire. Her mirthful laugh, like a child's, 
 still rang out at times, and her playful interest in all the little 
 happenings about the storm-bound cabin was as lively as 
 ever. But she moved languidly, and seemed to have lost 
 that sparkling zest in living that had made the first months 
 of her marriage like a revelation of superhuman existence. 
 The lassitude which had overtaken her on the snow-field, 
 the night when her strength and courage failed her for the 
 first time, slowly increased, imperceptibly altering her life, 
 changing her mood, dividing her more and more from her 
 husband, — the man, who was not subject to these dis- 
 abilities. 
 
 At first her husband spent all his time with her in the big 
 room, working at his bench with his tools, reading, or si- 
 lently meditating before the fire. But as the winter wore 
 away in a succession of fierce storms, he was summoned to 
 attend the sick scattered through the camps in the lonely 
 region. It had been a healthy season, but now at the close 
 of winter, after months in the rough cabins, men were faUing 
 ill. And as the lumbermen and the miners drifted back into 
 
 18& 
 
170 THE HEALER 
 
 the Settlement to spend their season's wages in fierce dissi- 
 pation sickness broke out there also. The doctor was in con- 
 stant demand. Helen, often left by herself for hours, far into 
 the night, resented these calls. She felt secretly hurt at his 
 willingness to make long, tiresome journeys, his readiness to 
 bind on his snow-shoes and set forth even in storm or at night, 
 whenever he was called. Slaving for ignorant people who 
 could do nothing for him and who repaid his services, if at 
 all, meagrely ! She would think of this and try to explaia 
 the Wild One to herself. 
 
 " He is good," she would say. " That is why he likes to give 
 himself." But that did not account wholly for his actions. 
 The saint in her Wild One was hardly apparent. 
 
 "He is proud of his skill," she would say. "It pleases him 
 to feel how much he is needed by these helpless people." 
 Nor would that satisfy her reason. Why should he care 
 to spend his power on these ignorant creatures when he might 
 more profitably exercise it among his equals ? 
 
 " He is restless, ' ' she said, waiting for him in the dreary, gray 
 light. "Like a man he must be doing something always — 
 needs excitement, adventure." Once she had been his excite- 
 ment, his great venture ! She was jealous of the work that 
 took him from her shrine, — as the woman always must be 
 until she has her own work and becomes adjusted to her 
 own world. 
 
 She needed her man now more than ever, and her sense 
 of ownership in him awakening she begrudged his spending 
 himself on anything but her. She bethought herself how 
 she might beguile him on his return, make him laugh, cling 
 to him, bind him closer to her. . . . 
 
THE HEALER 171 
 
 One sunny afternoon, announcing the coming end of 
 winter, they had gone to the Spring, and Holden had opened 
 the new camp-hospital to air the building after the winter. 
 As yet it had never been occupied, no occasion for its use 
 having arisen. Then they had gone to one of the old cabins 
 which the doctor used for storeroom and workroom. He was 
 building a new boat, and she liked to sit in the sunny doorway, 
 idle and dreaming, watching the man's sinewy arms bend the 
 thin strips of cedar about the slim ribs. A pleasant aromatic 
 odor came from the shavings on the floor. She saw a man 
 coming up the beaten path from the snowy Lake. He 
 stumbled and reeled, then with difficulty recovered himself. 
 She thought he must be drunk. 
 
 "Eric !" she called to her husband in a low tone. "Come 
 here!" 
 
 Holden came to the door, gave one sharp glance at he 
 man, who was advancing with painful effort, unseeing, as if 
 he were using all the powers of a dazed mind to keep himself 
 upright in the path, then sprang forwards and caught the 
 reeling figure in his arms. Dragging him into the cabin he 
 laid him upon the fresh shavings. "He's in a high fever 1" 
 the doctor said; "call Jack." The old man could not be 
 found ; so she herself was forced to help her husband carry 
 the sick man over to the new building, and then undress him 
 and get him into bed. The man kept moaning deliriously, 
 trying to explain in a thick, broken speech his trouble. 
 
 All through the coming months of her pregnancy the young 
 wife never forgot the disagreeable impression of the bloodshot 
 eyes, the red skin, the hairy face, — the. dirt and the squalor 
 of the stranger. This delirious creature, uncouth, uncared 
 
172 THE HEALER 
 
 for, seemed to her the very symbol of Sickness and Evil — all 
 that was loathsome ! She shuddered, and when the task was 
 done fled back to her little nest, and there her husband 
 foimd her when he came up at dark. She did not see the 
 light in his eyes, his eagerness, as she asked impatiently : — 
 
 "How is that dreadful creature?" 
 
 Her husband's face quickly changed, and his tone had in 
 it something hard as he answered : — 
 
 "He is a very sick man. Pneumonia — both lungs. 
 That 'dreadful creature' has walked, delirious, all the way 
 from the railroad camp at the Rapids — fourteen miles — to 
 get to me — to get help ! " 
 
 "Why did they let him do it?" 
 
 The doctor shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "He's an Italian — must have heard of this place and 
 escaped somehow — they don't look after sick men in a 
 railroad construction camp." 
 
 "They ought to have their own doctor," she observed 
 pettishly, vaguely irritated with the disturbance the sick 
 man had created in what had promised to be a beautiful 
 day. 
 
 "But they don't! "he said shortly. . . . 
 
 That evening the wife was to come closer to an under- 
 standing of her husband than before. After eating his 
 supper the doctor went back to his new patient, and she 
 waited for him with growing unrest. When he came in his 
 face seemed fired, as she had seen it at rare moments, — when 
 they had been together on the slope of Macatawa in the dawn, 
 the night they had first entered this new home together. 
 Unconsciously she resented the fact that anjrfching outside 
 
THE HEALER 173 
 
 of herself had the power to bring that light into his eyes. 
 What exalted him now, she said to herself, was mere egotism, 
 pride. The idea that this fever-stricken creature sought him 
 in his great need, as the stray particle of steel seeks the magnet, 
 with an unconscious compulsion of necessity, pleased him. 
 The blind instinct of faith in help to be got that drew this 
 forlorn being — ignorant even of the language — across all 
 those snowy miles to fall into his arms at the end fed his 
 pride. It was like the running of the waters to the lake, the 
 turning of the child to the parent, — Faith that compelled 
 deeds ! 
 
 And the inner need to justify this faith — to exert his power 
 — burned in the man's eyes, exalted him — as he was to- 
 night. 
 
 She said half mockingly: — 
 
 "So at last your fine new building is to have an occupant ?" 
 
 "Yes !" he cried buoyantly, striding back and forth as was 
 his wont in moments of mental excitement. "I knew it 
 would be needed. . . . This is but the first — there will 
 be many others ! " 
 
 "Do you mean to spend all your life here, looking after 
 lumber jacks and section hands?" 
 
 She spoke with an impulsive directness that was uncon- 
 scious of brutality. The still cold voice in which he answered 
 her frightened her. 
 
 "And why not? The lumber jack and the section hand 
 seem to need me — as much as Elport or — " 
 
 "Me !" she supphed bitterly. 
 
 "You do not understand this thing," he said, controlling 
 himself, as with a child. "Any one who needs my help, who 
 
174 THE HEALER 
 
 seeks me here in the woods, shall have it freely. That is why 
 I live as I do — that I may be able to give myself — and 
 not sell myself for money, as I should be compelled to do if 
 I lived in the world. I am free ! . . . I will make the old 
 magic come back once more to the Spring — I will heal !" 
 
 For the time her querulous, jealous woman's heart was 
 stilled. She was awed by the outburst she had provoked, 
 by the sight of hidden fires within her Wild One. 
 
IX 
 
 The fever-stricken Italian was but the first case in the 
 hospital, the first victim of an epidemic. After the healthy, 
 cold winter, as the wet weather set in, more cases of pneu- 
 monia broke out in the district. It seemed, also, as if a 
 malignant seed of disease, bred among the crowded settle- 
 ments of men, when carried by chance into the wide-spaced 
 wilderness, fastened upon its new victims with increased 
 virulence. The open land of forest and lake was no barrier 
 against disease. Wherever a little group of lumbermen, a 
 camp of half-breed htmters or of railroad laborers existed, the 
 fever found its way. The men, large and apparently hardy, 
 sleeping in crowded, overheated quarters, breathing foul 
 air, eating coarse, often bad food, became soft victims to the 
 contagion. Whole camps were prostrated by the same 
 disease. 
 
 By the end of April the new hospital was crowded with 
 eight cots, and the old cabins were reopened. New patients 
 were brought in from distant camps in sledges drawn by men. 
 It was no longer possible for the doctor, with Gray Jack's 
 help, to attend so many, and a couple of nurses were got from 
 the nuns at St. Anne's. Helen could see the gray-clothed 
 women with their huge white caps, moving in and out among 
 the bare trees below. 
 
 Holden worked hard night and day, making long journeys 
 
 175 
 
176 THE HEALER 
 
 to visit the more remote camps in the region. At last the 
 work passed even his powers of stern endurance : the sick 
 lay helpless, alone, in their remote corners. One night when 
 he returned after nightfall, haggard and weary, he said to 
 his wife : — 
 
 "I have sent for the young pup to come up here and help 
 me." 
 
 "Dr. Percy !" she exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes," he replied irritably. "Somebody must be here 
 when I am called away. . . . Maybe he will not come, 
 but if he has the right stuff in him he will grasp the chance." 
 
 Helen, with a vision of the popular young doctor caught 
 in the pleasant meshes of city life, doubted if he would respond 
 to the call for help from the woods at this season of the year. 
 But she misjudged him. He arrived, together with the 
 telegram announcing his departure, much befurred and be- 
 wrapped, looking pale and exotic in his city clothes. These 
 he quickly threw off and plunged into the abimdant work 
 that offered. After the night of his arrival Helen saw him 
 only in the distance, like the nuns from St. Anne's, walking 
 swiftly to and fro along the snowy paths of the camp below. 
 His coming seemed to please her husband greatly. 
 
 "The pup has the making of a man in him after all," he 
 said. "He was born to do another man's bidding — to be 
 a faithful servant." 
 
 And that she judged was what her husband wanted. 
 
 Meanwhile the wife was laid to one side, out of all this man's 
 work, quietly housed upon her cliff. At first she made feeble 
 efforts to get about, to go down to the busy camp, but her 
 husband chided her for her recklessness with the new life in 
 
THE HEALER 177 
 
 her. Now, more than ever, he seemed to set her apart 
 in her shrine, to keep her untouched, unharmed, removed from 
 the stress and the dangers of life. 
 
 And she was content to yield, to idle long hours before the 
 glowing fire. Rarely, on calm days, when between storms 
 the sun lay warm upon the banked snow and the wind was 
 still, she ventured out into her garden and sat there, looking 
 forth upon the frozen Lake, over which the freighters still 
 ploughed their way, — then went back to her cabin and her 
 warm fire, to doze and dream of the past. 
 
 The new life that had begun unawares within her seemed 
 to establish gradually a cleavage between her and her hus- 
 band — between her new self and the old. Those glorious 
 days after the first storm when she and her lover were living 
 alone at the top of the snowy world, in joyous freedom and 
 isolation, were far, far away, — sunk behind the horizon 
 of time in some other dream life. The child to be, strangely 
 enough, brought her back to that other existence, which had 
 been before she met her Wild One — to the girl of Suburbia. 
 As it grew within her it vivified old instincts and longings, 
 old habits and beliefs, while the strange intervening period 
 of passion and love sank out of sight, — forever ! 
 
 Thus drawn by the irresistible cords of the awakening 
 past, she wrote to her mother, telling her of the child that was 
 to be. Her mother's reply, which came with unexpected 
 promptness, aroused strange feelings. There had never 
 been strong love between mother and daughter. Impatience 
 and revolt had been the prevailing mood. But now the fact 
 of common womanhood seemingly awoke a latent love. 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow wrote wanderingly and querulously — it 
 
178 THE HEALER 
 
 was her first word since the family cataclysm — and between 
 the lines there was much ill-concealed reproach. Neverthe- 
 less, she was interested and concerned, and closed with an 
 urgent invitation for her daughter to come home. 
 
 "How can you be comfortable in that sort of place !" the 
 lady wailed. " You must come home, the sooner the better. 
 . . . Nora is engaged to Alfred Farlow, a promising young 
 man in your uncle's office. They will be married in June. 
 Come in time for the wedding." 
 
 So Nora, — little black-haired Nora, impish and boyish, 
 — had grown in a year to her own woman's estate ! . . . 
 The letter, on the whole, though it complained much, was 
 quieter than she had expected, and more broken. And 
 suddenly she felt a great desire to see once more the large, 
 comfortable, easy house in the city suburb, with its accus- 
 tomed order and comfort. . . . 
 
 Another letter from Vera, who was now married, confirmed 
 the impression her mother's letter had given her. "I think 
 you ought to see your mother," it said bluntly; "she has 
 changed. Nora's engagement has pleased her — he's a 
 nice boy, and is doing very well, I hear. I think he will 
 make little Nora an excellent husband if he can satisfy her 
 ambitions." 
 
 So little Nora had ambitions ! That was what she herself 
 had lacked — ambitions. Apparently Vera had ambitions, 
 and lively ones, of which thus far she had been disappointed. 
 The young diplomat had failed to secure the expected pro- 
 motion to London — had failed even of Berlin and Rome. 
 He would have to content himself with Portugal or "one 
 of those South American states that are worse than your 
 
THE HEALER 179 
 
 wilderness." Vera explained pessimistically, "Politics in 
 our country is still very crude. A well-equipped man like 
 Gerald has really no chance against some common little 
 millionnaire. We believed there was a change for the better 
 latterly, but it does not seem so. I want Gerald to resign 
 from the service, but he is hardly fitted for business life — 
 and in America there is nothing else for a man !" 
 
 Vera's ambitions, it seemed, were not giving her satisfac- 
 tion. Helen thought of her own little bare stone house, the 
 busy hospital camp below, and smiled with a sense of the dis- 
 parity in things. 
 
 That night she spoke to her husband of her mother's 
 letter. When she mentioned casually the invitation for her 
 to return to her home for the child's coming, Holden took 
 the pipe from his lips and looked at his wife steadily out of 
 his sunken eyes. Under this close examination she moved 
 uneasily. 
 
 "That means you want to go back there and have your 
 child in your mother's house?" he demanded at last in a 
 toneless voice. 
 
 She had not admitted it yet to herself, and it seemed harsh 
 for him to press her thus bluntly to a decision, and not to 
 recognize the woman's natural desire for the conventional, 
 the usual at such a crisis in her life. 
 
 "Not if — if — " she stammered, "if you don't want it ! 
 But it might be easier," she concluded weakly. 
 
 "But you want to go back," he asserted in the same dry 
 tone. 
 
 "No !" she exclaimed, lying to herself; "that is, not to 
 leave you — • but why can't you come with me ? " 
 
180 THE HEALER 
 
 "Leave here now !" he muttered, rising and turning away 
 from her. 
 
 It was like the suggestion to an officer to leave the battle 
 at its crisis, to run from his work at the whim of a woman. 
 He lighted his lantern preparatory to going back to the Spring 
 for his evening visit. 
 
 "You don't seem to need me !" she cried impatiently. 
 "All you need is your sick." 
 
 He looked at her enigmatically, then pushed open the door 
 and without a word departed. She watched the wavering 
 glimmer of his lantern along the steep path. Why had he 
 not given her one caress, a touch of the hand, to assure her 
 that she was still his first desire and need ? " I'm so homely 
 now," she said with a sigh, looking at her shapeless figure. 
 "It is always so with men !". . . 
 
 The rising sun came into her window these mornings, 
 and she awoke at the first touch of golden light. Turning 
 she found that she was alone, and with a start of sudden fear 
 rose and looked into the living room. There on the lounge 
 before the dead fire her husband lay sleeping. He had come 
 in late, and as was often the case when she was asleep, had 
 thrown himself down before the fire in order not to disturb 
 her. She looked at him as he lay unconscious, scarcely 
 breathing, his lower jaw firmly closed under his moustache, 
 his thin face worn from the hard labor of the past weeks. 
 There was something mysterious in this man so near her, so 
 intimately hers, yet so strange and hidden in his being. As 
 she watched him in his deep sleep, a feeling akin to fear came 
 over her, as if he were an unknown force that might strike 
 her and cause her pain, — and also the child she held within 
 
THE HEALER 181 
 
 her, — the children ! He was still the untamed man of the 
 wilds, and now she wondered at her courage in loving 
 him, in abandoning her people to follow him. . . . Throw- 
 ing a cloak over herself she moved noiselessly to the door 
 and opened it. All outside was still and golden in the 
 first dawn. She stayed thus on the threshold, wondering, 
 undecided, half wishing to flee through the dark woods from 
 the sleeping man, to escape ! She made a step forwards, 
 then paused. Suddenly she felt an arm about her, draw- 
 ing her back, and looked up frightened into her husband's 
 face. 
 
 "You must not stay out in the cold like this!" he ex- 
 claimed, sleepily. "What are you doing, love?" 
 
 He drew her to him and kissed her. She followed him into 
 the room and waited while he lighted the fire. 
 
 "You were trying to run away," he said whimsically. 
 
 She shivered as if the cold of the dawn had chilled her, 
 and made no reply. 
 
 "But I shan't let you," he added, with an odd smile. 
 "I've captured you for life." 
 
 And that day when she was alone she wrote her mother, 
 
 "I can't leave my husband, and he will not go with 
 me. . . . Why don't you take the Colonel's camp for the 
 summer? It is very near us, you remember." 
 
X 
 
 After a long, driving rain, during wiiich tiie snowy earth 
 and the stiff trees seemed to relax, the winter broke up. A 
 week of unusually warm weather completed the seasonal 
 change, driving the snow-line far up on the flank of Macatawa 
 and stripping the ground of its white blanket except in the 
 deeper gulfs of the dark forest. A drab coat of old ice still 
 bound the Lake, but it was rotten and unsafe for travel, 
 groaning and quaking nights and mornings as if in throes 
 of inner dissolution. . . . 
 
 The doctor's young wife, lying in the sunshine with her 
 casement window wide open, could see a flock of large birds, 
 wheeling in circles above the gray lake, as if waiting for the 
 ice to part and reveal their food. They had come myste- 
 riously overnight from the southland, where spring was al- 
 ready established. The doctor had marshalled his little 
 band of invalids along the sandy shore of the Cove where 
 they might feel the sunshine and breathe the breath of spring. 
 They lay there inert, bundled up in all sorts of ragged attire, 
 — tattered blankets, old mackinaws, fur coats. They were 
 bloodless, unshaved, uncouth figures. 
 
 "What a lot of wretched beggars!" the young woman 
 thought, with the unconscious contempt of her thrifty race. 
 "And Eric fusses over them as he never did with Mr. El- 
 port!" 
 
 182 
 
THE HEALER 183 
 
 She could see her husband below, bending over one of 
 his patients, giving him some medicine. She turned im- 
 patiently from the sight and looked out once more to the 
 open lake, where the white gulls wheeled and called complain- 
 ingly. Thoughts drifted idly across her mind as she lay there 
 in the sunlight, looking at the gulls, — thoughts alien to the 
 Healing Spring. Why did Eric waste his great gift here ! 
 He was too good an instrument for the trivial task he had 
 chosen. There were many others, like Percy or even less, 
 who could do this task adequately enough. If it were in 
 a great city hospital, with its opportunities and connections, 
 that would be a very different thing. The most famous 
 doctors, she had heard, worked in the hospitals, and whenever 
 they were accused of charging exorbitantly for their services 
 to the rich defended themselves by citing their charity 
 work in the hospitals. That was the sensible thing to do, — 
 like other people. Her mood these days contained an un- 
 formulated criticism of the unconventional, the unusual. 
 What men had always done, what they usually felt and 
 thought, — that must be the reasonable way of thinking, 
 feeling, doing. . . . 
 
 After another brief storm the ice went out from the Lake, 
 suddenly, swiftly, almost silently. She awoke one morning 
 to find the blue, dimpling water she loved, in place of the gray 
 ice floor. The disappearance of the ice was another promise 
 of the awakening spring, another prophecy of the summer to 
 come, when there would be people, and the Lake would be 
 gay with white sails and pretty canoes creeping along the 
 shores. She sang that morning — first time for many days 
 — and when Eric looked at her inquiringly she could not 
 
184 THE HEALER 
 
 tell him why. In her heart she felt that with the going of 
 the ice a prison door had been swung open. 
 
 The day after the ice went out the boat was sent to the 
 Settlement for the mail and supplies, of which they had been 
 deprived while the ice was unsafe for travel. Dr. Percy 
 brought the letters to the stone house that afternoon on his 
 return and stayed to chat, sitting at his ease on the threshold 
 of the open door. He was bubbling over with news, the 
 gossip of the Settlement. Trains were coming in now, it 
 seemed, — irregularly, but the first of June a daily service 
 would begin. 
 
 "Gee ! But it was good to see an engine and choo-choo 
 cars ; funny, though, in the old Settlement, where the tree 
 trunks still stand in the streets. The old flat cars gave you 
 a feeling of the pavement. Not so far from Broadway, after 
 all, eh?" 
 
 The fat little doctor's eyes glistened with the city man's 
 irresistible appetite for the flesh-pots and the movement 
 of feet. The young wife smiled sympathetically. She must 
 go over some day and see the marvellous train of cars. The 
 railroad would tempt him away? But the little man shook 
 his head positively. 
 
 "Not yet ! It is too exciting working with the doctor. 
 He puts a meaning into things." . . . Gold had been 
 discovered up north the previous autumn, and the lumber- 
 men coming in from the Temisko district had brought 
 the news. He might run off for a time and stake a claim. 
 That would be exciting, — big sport ! And if he struck it ? 
 "Well, me for Europe and the grand tour, then ! No more 
 pill giving," he laughed boyishly. 
 
THE HEALER 185 
 
 Meantime there was unwonted activity at the Settle- 
 ment, — the stir of a new life. Two new hotels had been 
 started, — one "whopper" in brick ! Blakeville, you must 
 call the town, please — no longer just the "Settlement." 
 It would be the outfitting station and point of departure 
 for the mines. The railroad had come at the dramatic 
 moment. 
 
 "And won't it all jar the doctor !" the young man con- 
 cluded. Both laughed, and Dr. Percy went on more seriously, 
 "But he can't help himself. It's no good burying your 
 head in your blanket and refusing to see hght. As old Elport 
 told him, this was bound to come, — the opening up of the 
 country, settlers, and all the rest. The gold has just hurried 
 it up, — that's all. And the doctor'll get used to it. It'll 
 bring big things to him, too. I only wish I had his chance ! " 
 
 "What chance?" the young wife asked eagerly. 
 
 "Oh, to make a place for myself in the world, — a smash- 
 ing big reputation !" 
 
 "Here?" 
 
 "Yes, why not?" he replied easily. "The Paynter 
 brothers did it, 'way off in Wisconsin — brought people from 
 all over the world to them. Abdominal surgery, you know. 
 And there was Lawton in Colorado — consumption. And 
 Lingard over in Switzerland, — nervous diseases, — and 
 Zumpf in Austria — some little bit of a village, I can't remem- 
 ber what they call it. But everybody knows Zumpf's work 
 on diseases of the spinal cord." 
 
 He added other instances of famous medical men who had 
 established their cures at remote places, and brought the sick 
 to them from all parts of the world. 
 
186 THE HEALER 
 
 "These days," he explained, "people like to run about, 
 if they have the money and an excuse. They'll go thousands 
 of miles for a good thing. All you need is to have the goods, 
 or make them think you have!" he added with an easy 
 cynicism. "And the doctor has the goods all right. I hope 
 he'll go in for nervous diseases — that's the rich field nowa- 
 days. Oh, he might take rheumatics, diabetes, digestive 
 disorders, too. The Spring would help him there. But he's 
 got personality, and that's what counts in modern therapy, 
 as in everything else." 
 
 The young doctor warmed with enthusiasm for his subject, 
 painting for the wife the golden opportunities that lay in 
 the Healing Spring, once its fame had become spread abroad 
 and the fame of her Healer. All of which the little doctor 
 seemed to think was inevitable, a matter of only a very few 
 years. 
 
 "Why, talk about gold mines — the doctor's got one here 
 right under his hand in this outfit!" He pointed to the 
 Spring carelessly. "Of course he'll have to fix things up 
 a good bit, — build cottages, a bath house, a place for the 
 nurses, and all that. Something rustic and simple, but com- 
 fortable, you know. And he'll have to get rid of his half- 
 breeds and lumber jacks. . . . It's a gold mine," he re- 
 peated. "Elport saw it, and he has a good head." 
 
 "But," the wife protested, "you know the doctor — he 
 would never consent to dismiss the ragged regiment, as he 
 calls them. Besides, it will take money to build." 
 
 The little doctor laughed. 
 
 "We know he's nutty about some things, — all great men 
 are, ain't they ? Obstinate — wants to run a sort of phal- 
 
THE HEALER 187 
 
 anstery, where any beggar can come and get his cure free. 
 Idealistic, poetic, philanthropic, and all that ! But it don't 
 work — he'll learn." 
 
 Helen shook her head dubiously. 
 
 "He can't help himself ! And he won't want to when he 
 gets started. He'll need some money to put up his build- 
 ings, and the only way to get it is to make it or borrow it, 
 isn't that so?" 
 
 Then with lowered voice, as if he were taking the wife 
 into a conspiracy, he said: — 
 
 "I've started it already, — written to some men I know, 
 told 'em what a wonder Holden is, — the sort of camp we 
 are running, and all that. Just friendly letters, you know. 
 But I got some bites, — inquiries, to-day. You know those 
 city doctors have a lot of cases they don't know what to do 
 with, — rich people who can't get well and are always look- 
 ing around for something new to try. The doctors become 
 tired of them and like to pass them on. Then some day, 
 perhaps, one of these old rounders gets well, — or thinks he 
 does, — say it was up here under the doctor's care ? He 
 puts it all down to the last thing. Then the trick's done ! 
 He goes away and talks about his cure — and other lame 
 ducks flock in here. Elport, you can bet, has been doing 
 a lot of taUdng this winter, and he talks to just the right 
 crowd, — worn-out business men, the big fellows, who have 
 knocked out their digestions and are getting old and don't 
 know what is coming to them. You'll see things happen 
 this summer, Mrs. Holden !" 
 
 Helen laughed at his exuberant picture. 
 
 "But you've been describing just the ordinary sanitarium. 
 
188 THE HEALER 
 
 and you know what the doctor thinks of sanitariums and the 
 doctors who run them. He calls them 'birds of prey,' 
 'fakirs/ 'bandits' !" 
 
 Dr. Percy nodded his head wisely. 
 
 "This'll be different — just as the doctor is different. 
 He'll keep the fake out." 
 
 " He is different," the young wife agreed proudly. 
 
 The little doctor raised « pudgy hand impressively. 
 
 "Don't I know that? I've watched 'ein, — big doctors 
 at the hospitals and in the medical schools, here and abroad. 
 The ones that know all the best tricks, all the up-to-date 
 serrnns, treatments, cures ; but they can't touch our doctor ! 
 It isn't what he knows — though considering how he's 
 buried himself here in the woods these last years, he knows 
 a wonderful lot, more'n you possibly suspect. But it's 
 different from knowing, what he has. There are many 
 knowing ones in the profesh, and they're no particular good 
 either, when it comes to making people well." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "You know what the people around here call him?" 
 
 "The Healer!" 
 
 "That's it ! . . . He understands bodies by some sixth 
 sense we haven't any of us got, — sees what we could never 
 find out with our five, — and then he cures — he really makes 
 folks well ! Why, we had cases this last month of double 
 pneumonia that would have died in any city hospital — and 
 they are almost well." 
 
 "Perhaps it's magic," the young wife suggested lightly. 
 
 "It is a kind of magic — like any other big gift. It's 
 more than medicine. It's will — pure will !" 
 
THE HEALER 189 
 
 He paused to mop his brow. 
 
 " Only one death in thirty, and some of the toughest cases 
 I ever saw — " 
 
 His voice fell as he saw Holden approaching at a rapid pace. 
 
 "I'm off," the doctor called out. "The ice is out in the 
 upper lake, and I can get to Point Barrow in the canoe. 
 Jack will help me paddle — you must stay here, Percy, and 
 look after things. . . . Those Frenchies up there must be 
 in a bad way after being cut off for a month." 
 
 He hastily made the few preparations that he needed for 
 his expeditions. He looked worn, after all these weeks of 
 hard labor, but he was alert and happy, fully alive with the 
 hght in his eyes that Helen knew so well. She watched the 
 two men go down the path to the Cove, talking eagerly, and 
 she envied them their work, their freedom. More and more 
 she had become tied, womanwise, and knew that she would 
 never more be her Wild One's complete mate. Like many 
 a modern civilized woman she questioned the order of nature : 
 she did not wish to become a mother. She resented the 
 handicap of her sex ! 
 
 The little doctor's words, his boundless faith in her husband, 
 and admiration for him, set her to dreaming once more of 
 him and his great gift. Theirs, she mused, must be an un- 
 usual hf e, — possibly centred here about the Healing Spring 
 as Dr. Percy had pictured it — for the present. Only for 
 the present, however, for subtle currents had started in her 
 brain coincident with her motherhood, curiously atavistic 
 instincts that pointed back to the accepted paths of her race. 
 But before her Wild One was thoroughly broken to modern 
 harness there would be storms, she knew. He was not like 
 
190 THE HEALER 
 
 other men. Of that she was proud, as a woman who had 
 mated herself to him. Of that she was sure. Elport, the 
 practical and worldly, as well as Percy, the material and 
 earthly, both believed in the magic of the gift. . . . Thus 
 she dreamed on in her waiting moments, alone in the little 
 gray stone cabin that her lover had built for her. 
 
XI 
 
 With the final breaking up of the long winter new activi- 
 ties sprang at once into being, overnight it seemed, as the 
 buds swelled on the trees and the blades of grass pushed out 
 upon the gray hillsides. First came the long procession of 
 logs, the winter's cut, flooded out of all the little streams into 
 the great Lake, rafted thence in dark patches, like mar- 
 quetrie, past the Settlement to the flume at the head of the 
 river, through which they disappeared into the broiUng rapids 
 and thundered down the turbulent reaches to the mills below. 
 There were a few days when it seemed to the doctor's wife, 
 looking down from her perch on the cliff, that she might al- 
 most walk across the Lake to the Settlement on a solid floor 
 of brown spruce logs. 
 
 After the logs came the prospectors, pushing up the Lake 
 with their camp outfits towing out behind them, in steam 
 launch and motor-boat, even in canoes with half-breed 
 Indians at the paddle, rushing hungrily to get into the wilder- 
 ness where gold had been found. And lastly the construc- 
 tion camp of the new railroad was moved up from below 
 and pitched just across the Lake, north of the Settlement. 
 There was to be no pause in its march northwards. Holden 
 called it the caterpillar, which grew on what it fed and reached 
 forth for more, slowly dragging its fat body over the devas- 
 tated land. 
 
 191 
 
192 THE HEALER 
 
 One beautiful day at the end of May when nature was 
 taking a brave leap forwards towards summer, Horace Elport 
 arrived, his launch panting noisily into the Cove. He leaped 
 out briskly upon the sandy shore, and his shout brought the 
 two doctors from their work. 
 
 "Here's your invalid!" he announced, doubling a firm 
 fist and striking the doctor robustly. " I've obeyed orders — 
 renounced the pleasures of life, and most of the pomps and 
 vanities. Promising sample of your handiwork, eh?" 
 
 And, indeed, though he was thin and pale, he was alert and 
 buoyant, looked fit for new conquests as he proclaimed him- 
 self. 
 
 "I came in on my own car over my own road, as I 
 told you I would, and I'm going on, too!" He turned 
 to Holden with a challenging twinkle in his pleasant eyes. 
 "Still hate the choo-choo cars as much as ever, doctor? 
 You old fogey, mossback, hermit — with your Spring ! 
 Come on up north with me — I'm going into the gold 
 camps and farther !" 
 
 He bubbled on in irresistible good humor, an arm linked to 
 either of the doctors. Perceiving the new hospital, with its 
 open windows and the patients sunning themselves on the 
 broad uncovered porches, he shook his fist at it boyishly. 
 
 "Many's the day last summer I'd like to have put dyna- 
 mite under those walls, and gone fishing instead ! " he cried. 
 "But I see you are using it — doing a good business, my 
 hermit?" 
 
 Holden smiled grimly. 
 
 "Your business, Elport," he retorted. "The contractor 
 at your railroad camp runs a place too filthy for beasts, and 
 
THE HEALER 1^3 
 
 this spring the men all got sick. Not a medicine, not a doc- 
 tor — you people ought to go to jail for keeping such a joint ! 
 Lacky I was here ! " 
 
 "My dear man," Elport replied tranquilly to the charge, 
 "I'm not responsible for the way Callahan and O'Rouke run 
 their construction camps. But I'll see old Callahan and 
 make him put in a medical outfit. . . . All the same it gave 
 you something to do — kept your hand in the game." 
 
 He stopped at the tap for the spring water and drew a cup, 
 which he tasted with a wry face. 
 
 "Same old Burgundy," he observed. "Don't need any 
 magic now, thank God ! But, doctor, I've brought a friend 
 with me, Jimmy Eaton." 
 
 Little Dr. Percy dropped behind the others and winked 
 broadly at the doctor's wife, who had joined the group. 
 
 " Fine fellow as ever was, but he's knocked out, tired of Ufe, 
 and all that — and talks a dreadful lot about it. . . . I 
 brought him along in the car with me. I told him you could 
 make him as fit as ever, doctor ! " 
 
 He turned quickly on Holden, who had begun to scowl 
 suspiciously. 
 
 "And you will, doctor?" 
 
 "I'll look him over," Holden grumbled in reply. 
 
 Helen's heart fluttered with excitement. So it had begun 
 — what Percy had predicted, what she had longed for more 
 than she knew — success ! . . . 
 
 The railroad man, who had a quick eye for detail, observed 
 the foundation stone gathered for a new building. 
 
 "The bath-house you were talking about?" 
 
 "Yes, for sweat baths," Holden explained, "to take the 
 
194 THE HEALER 
 
 place of the old Indian tepees. That's what they used the 
 Healing Spring for, chiefly." 
 
 " But it's too small ! You'll be doing a lot of building here 
 soon — get the fever like the rest of us across the Lake. You 
 ought to put some cottages over there under the trees — " 
 He pointed to an opening in the woods on the farther side of 
 the glade. 
 
 Again Dr. Percy winked at the doctor's wife. She felt 
 deUghtfuUy that she was sharing in a conspiracy. Her 
 husband seemed unconscious of the plot. He was genuinely 
 pleased to see his old patient once more, and as always was 
 much interested in what the practical man of the large world 
 had to say. His stern, bony face was serious, but mild. 
 
 "Well, I must be off !" Elport exclaimed at last. 
 
 When Helen m-ged him to stay and make them a visit, he 
 shook his head. 
 
 "Another time. Now I am on an expedition — 'way up 
 north — farther than you ever got. Why not come with 
 me?" Then noticing the wife's look he added quickly, 
 " Later, then — we'll go up into the real wilderness, eh ? " 
 The doctor readily agreed. 
 
 "And now about my friend Eaton. The man seems a 
 little touched in his mind. Poor old boy, he used to be a 
 tremendous worker la-bas in our world ! You'll go over with 
 me now to see him ? " 
 
 Dr. Percy smiled. 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 So Helen watched the three men put off for the Settlement 
 in the white launch, then slowly went up the steep cliff path 
 to her home. A little smile played over her face, a smile of 
 
THE HEALER 195 
 
 content. The taming of the Wild One had begun, and it 
 had all turned out differently from what might have been 
 expected. 
 
 Elport had told her, also, an interesting bit of personal 
 news. The Colonel would open the Eyrie for the season, and 
 Mrs. Goodnow was to come there almost at once, and later, 
 perhaps. Vera Councillor. It was exciting ! She had to rest 
 several times before she gained the top, and she reahzed that 
 this steep path, a short cut from the Cove to her cabin, down 
 which she had raced with her husband the summer before 
 for their morning plunge in the Lake, was no longer possible 
 for her. The little white launch was puffing fussily out past 
 the headland into the Lake, the gasoline motor snapping like 
 an angry dog. It was the first of its kind upon their quiet 
 waters. Life was changing, she felt, and ' it held alluring 
 promise. . . . 
 
 Her husband found her leaning over a dull fire in the great 
 fireplace when he returned from the Settlement. At the 
 first glance she could tell that his mood had already changed, 
 as it so often did for no apparent reason. He was silent, pre- 
 occupied with his own thoughts, did not caress her, scarcely 
 noticed her presence. He was often taken with this black, 
 dumb spirit when he had been to the Settlement. Neverthe- 
 less, she ventured to ask: — 
 
 "And how was the stranger ?" 
 
 "He was there at the hotel, full of his troubles." 
 
 "Very sick?" 
 
 "In mind." 
 
 "Did you bring him back with you ?" 
 
 "He'll come to-morrow." 
 
196 THE HEALER 
 
 "Where will you put him ?" 
 
 "Anywhere — like the others." 
 
 She smiled softly to herself. This Eaton, she knew, was 
 a very rich man, accustomed only to the softer sides of a 
 luxurious civilization. The thought of him ranged beside 
 the "ragged regiment," or lying on a cot in a windy tent, 
 filled her with amusement. 
 
 "Eric," she said after a pause, "did you know that the 
 Eyrie was to be open this summer?" 
 
 He waited. 
 
 "My uncle, so Mr. Elport told me, is going to open it — 
 and, " — she hesitated \mconsciously, a little fearful of what 
 her husband might think of her news, — " mother is to be 
 with him !" 
 
 Her eyes fell away from his sharp glance. She could not 
 confess that she had herself suggested this to her mother when 
 she had written in response to that first letter. 
 
 " So they are closing in on us on all sides," he observed. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 " First Elport comes, then his railroad and all the rubbish 
 that brings, — among the rest this pot-bellied millionnaire 
 he's left on my hands, — and now your mother tracks you into 
 the wilderness !" 
 
 "It's only natural," she protested weakly. "Poor old 
 mother !" 
 
 He looked at her darkly. 
 
 " She ventures back into the woods to capture you — and 
 your child !" 
 
 "Oh, not that!" 
 
 She laughed at his exaggeration. 
 
THE HEALER 197 
 
 " Elport wants me to put up comfortable cottages — make 
 a Hydropathic establishment out of the Healing Spring. 
 Next he will run a launch in connection with his road, peddle 
 the water at his lunch counters, advertise us in his folders. 
 . . . They are closing in on us. Time to move on, woman ! " 
 
 He put his hand on her neck in a rough caress. She looked 
 up and smiled into his moody face, then with her small hands 
 pulled his head to her bosom. 
 
 "I'm not ready yet for the trail, my Wild One !" she mur- 
 mured caressingly. 
 
 " Yes, I forgot the child ! When it comes, we'll wrap it in 
 a blanket and tie it to your back papoose fashion, and move 
 on!" 
 
 She did not argue the matter. What was the use of debate, 
 her brown eyes seemed to say. Life arranged itself, was 
 always working its own will, as at present, and this mother- 
 to-be did not contemplate that it would demand of her a 
 further move into the wilderness at the heels of her moody 
 master. 
 
 "We won't let them catch us, anyhow," he muttered. 
 And there for the present the matter ended, with the woman 
 resting in the man's arms, her soft hand playing about his 
 corded neck, — mystery in her brown eyes, vision in his ! 
 
 As always and always from the begiiming of time. 
 
XII 
 
 It was her husband who first told her of her mother's ar- 
 rival at the Eyrie. 
 
 "They came this morning, so Gray Jack said — ten trunks, 
 three women, a Jap cook, and an Englishman." 
 
 "Fenton !" she exclaimed, ignoring the irony with which 
 he enumerated Mrs. Goodnow's train. 
 
 "You will want to go over there to-day." 
 
 " Some time, of course," she replied, dissembling her eager- 
 ness. 
 
 "I will stay at the Spring with Percy for dinner," he an- 
 noimced curtly. 
 
 He had apparently thought out the situation, and while 
 he made no objection to her resuming relations with her 
 woman's world, she must not expect him to enter it. 
 
 He waited about the cabin while she got ready to go over 
 to the Eyrie. They were both conscious of the same memory 
 — that day fourteen months before when he had stalked into 
 her little ordered world of Suburbia, and at a nod from him 
 she had followed him out of her mother's home into the wil- 
 derness. To-day that seemed to her a greater event than 
 it had then. Their love had been a peculiar relation — a 
 defiance of the usual, the accepted. The very ceremony 
 itself was evidence of revolt. And now she was guiltily aware 
 
 198 
 
THE HEALER 199 
 
 that in his eyes she was surrendering to the conventional, was 
 hauling down her flag of defiance, so to speak, and she was 
 secretly glad of the occasion. He said: — 
 
 "You seem to be in a hurry to get back there." 
 
 She smiled faintly. 
 
 "Has it been so bad these months with me — so lonely?" 
 
 " Eric ! " she protested. 
 
 " You seemed to be happy — for a time ! " 
 
 "You know how happy we have been — we are!" she 
 corrected, quickly. 
 
 "Yet you put on your coat and hat and run at the first 
 chance," he persisted in his mocking tone. 
 
 "You know I am content with you, always," she protested. 
 "It's only natural," — she hesitated and unconsciously her 
 glance fell to her figure, which betrayed her condition. 
 
 " It's only nature ! " he repeated more gently. 
 
 After a silence, when she was ready to set out, she came to 
 him and wreathed her arms about his neck. 
 
 "Wild One," she whispered, "why can't you act like — 
 others !" 
 
 "Then I should have to be like them!" 
 
 "Well, why not — a little?" she flashed. 
 
 "Powerless and feeble — tied up — you would like that ?" 
 and he abruptly escaped from her embrace and went about 
 his work. 
 
 She set out through the woods for the Eyrie, walking slowly, 
 thinking that her husband should be there by her side, in- 
 stead of working over his sick paupers at the Healing Spring. 
 Then she meditated on the many events that had come into 
 
200 THE HEALER 
 
 her solitary life since she had parted from this mother. She 
 was a little timid at the prospect of their first meeting, yet 
 unexpectedly wistful for it, too. 
 
 Fenton, the smooth-faced, colorless Englishman was on 
 the open veranda of the camp, directing the servants about 
 the trunks. She was glad to see Fenton, — a well contrived 
 automaton. He reminded her of order and Suburbia. 
 
 " Oh, Fenton ! " she exclaimed, restraining her impulse to 
 take him by the hand. "How are you?" 
 
 " Very well. Miss Helen, and how are you ? " he asked in his 
 correct servant's voice. "Quite well — that's good. You 
 will find Mrs. Goodnow upstairs in her room, — yes, the same 
 she had before, Miss. . . . Yes, we had a comfortable jour- 
 ney — the cars come through now — a great improvement, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 As she went into the cottage, she thought that there was 
 much good in the Fenton order of fife, — so uniform and 
 reliable ! 
 
 "Mother!" 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow was saying to a maid in her rasping voice : -r- 
 
 " I don't suppose you can get a clothes brush in this place. 
 You shouldn't have forgot to pack one — be careful of the 
 lining, — " and turning to her daughter as the servant dis- 
 appeared she continued in the same tone, — "Such worthless 
 servants one has to put up with these days, and they demand 
 such awful wages! . . . Well, Nell, how are you?" 
 
 In her glance was all the criticism she had been forced to 
 restrain since her daughter's flight from home. ; 
 
 "Very well, mother !" 
 
 Mother and daughter kissed and tacitly agreed to ignore 
 
THE HEALER 201 
 
 their difference. They dropped at once into family gossip, 
 and an hour flew by. They "got on, " as the saying is, more 
 easily than either had expected, than they had, in fact, before 
 the daughter's departure from home. Fenton served them a 
 delightful luncheon on the veranda, and the httle Jap's skilful 
 rendering of the toothsome dishes of Suburbia pleased the 
 young woman, as did the gossip about old acquaintance, — 
 even her mother's familiar whine of disapprobation with 
 hfe. After Fenton had left them, Mrs. Goodnow gave her 
 daughter another, more searching examination, and then 
 observed : — 
 
 "Well, where do you live, Nell?" 
 
 " Up the Lake half a mile, near the Spring." 
 
 "What does your husband do with himself? How does 
 he support you ? " the old lady bluntly questioned. 
 
 " Eric's been very busy this spring — there have been so 
 many people sick in the camps." 
 
 "Practises medicine — here ?" 
 
 "All about through the country — and he brings cases to 
 the Spring. You must come over and see us, mother ! " 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow grunted dubiously. 
 
 "Do they pay — these people he doctors?" 
 
 " Sometimes — when they can." 
 
 "Does that give you enough to live on?" 
 
 The daughter smiled at her mother's persistency. 
 
 "It doesn't cost much to live up here, as we live," she 
 added, looking about the comfortable Eyrie, modestly called 
 a "camp." 
 
 "Well," the old lady remarked after a time of reflection, 
 "how could you have been such a fool, Nell?" 
 
202 THE HEALER 
 
 "But I don't think I was a fool !" 
 
 " You were — to throw away your chances like that ! 
 Why, you might have had almost any position." 
 
 "I didn't want 'em!" 
 
 "You were a fool," the older woman retorted positively. 
 "I thought you would have found it out by this time." 
 
 "I never shall find it out 1" she protested stoutly. 
 
 "Well, there's no help for that now. . . . Can't you make 
 him do something else ? The Colonel knows a railroad man 
 — a Mr. Elport— " 
 
 "We know Mr. Elport very well," the daughter said 
 quickly. "He stayed with us a long time last summer and 
 fall." 
 
 "He said your husband had ability." 
 
 " Of course — he's a very remarkable man ! " 
 
 "Then why can't he do something with his brains, — take 
 you out of this lonely hole ?" 
 
 "But, mother dear, he thinks he is doing something — 
 here." 
 
 "Nonsense ! Why don't he make money and let you live 
 like other people ? " . . . 
 
 And though the young wife tried to defend her husband 
 and explain his purpose, she suddenly realized that it 
 was with words not very dissimilar she had left him that 
 morning. 
 
 Later in the afternoon Mrs. Goodnow accompanied her 
 daughter home. The young wife was apprehensive of the 
 coming meeting between the two old antagonists, and she 
 stepped inside her door with trepidation. But the stone 
 house was empty and the fire had gone out. A few dishes 
 
THE HEALER 203 
 
 from their hurried breakfast that morning were left upon the 
 table. Mrs. Goodnow glanced about with keen eyes, and 
 presently sniffed. 
 
 " Is this what you call your home ? Poor Nell ! " 
 
 In this exclamation — half wail — there was all the criti- 
 cism of Suburbia upon the Primitive. The well-ordered large 
 house, with its rugs done weekly by the vacuum process, its 
 first and second parlor maid and chamber maid, its clutter of 
 ugly and useless furniture, seemed to rear in its mistress's 
 voice and throw contempt upon the crude simplicity of the 
 little stone cabin. 
 
 "I'll make up the fire in a minute," Nell said hastily, anx- 
 ious to defend her small nest from criticism. "It's really 
 quite cozy here and comfortable enough." 
 
 While her daughter was busy with the fire and making 
 tea, Mrs. Goodnow examined every corner of the tiny 
 dwelling, from the bear skins on the floor to the hand-made 
 bed with its fragrant mat of fresh balsam. Then she came 
 back to the fireplace and seated herself gingerly on the broad 
 settle. She took the tea from her daughter's hand, but set 
 it down on the table untouched. \ 
 
 " It's simply ridiculous ! " she began. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "That you should be living like this — and doing your own 
 work." 
 
 Her own mother had done all the work for a farmer's family 
 of eight, including the hired man-servant, but that had long 
 since been forgotten in the Goodnow family. 
 
 "But I like it — and it's good for me. See how well I 
 am!" 
 
204 THE HEALER 
 
 "If he hasn't money enough to support you properly, why 
 — I'll make you an allowance." 
 
 "Eric wouldn't take money from you, mother." 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow looked quite incredulous. 
 
 "He doesn't expect you to have a child here, does he?" 
 Mrs. Goodnow indicated the inner room with a disdainful 
 wave of the hand. 
 
 "It's really comfortable enough." 
 
 "It's impossible !" the old lady pronounced with finahty. 
 "I s'pose you have to bathe in the Lake?" 
 
 "Not in the winter!" 
 
 " Crazy — the whole thing. Just mad ! " 
 
 She sipped her tea, then put it down again. 
 
 "When is the baby coming?" 
 
 This was the first direct reference she had made to the 
 child, and the young mother reddened. 
 
 "The end of the month, I expect." 
 
 " You must come over to the Colonel's place as soon as we 
 are settled." 
 
 "I don't think Eric would consent." 
 
 "He'll have to!" 
 
 The old lady pushed aside the tea and rose. 
 
 "You needn't come back with me — I can find my way. 
 I s'pose you'll have to get his supper!" 
 
 "There'll be plenty of time." 
 
 "To think of my daughter living so I It's like an emi- 
 grant!" 
 
 To the Puritan born, whose ancestors were all emigrants, 
 there was nothing lower in the social lot. Her daughter 
 laughed. 
 
THE HEALEE 205 
 
 But as she reentered her home after accompanying her 
 mother part of the way her face was grave. It occurred to 
 her for the first time that the little stone cabin was not 
 adapted to a family, — even a family of three. Her husband 
 came in late, preoccupied. He seemed to have forgotten 
 that she had seen her mother for the first time since their 
 flight. He caressed her with the usual remark, "All well 
 to-day?" 
 
 She did not venture then to raise the question that was 
 agitating her mother, but some days later, after further urging 
 from the old lady, she said: — 
 
 "Mother thinks I had better go to the Colonel's camp for 
 my sickness." 
 
 "Why so ?" he asked quickly. "Is she a good midwife ?" 
 
 "It isn't — very roomy here — for sickness, you know." 
 
 " Oh, the cabin isn't large enough ? " 
 
 "Notthat — but— " 
 
 She did not like to remind her lover that she had been born 
 to greater comfort than he gave her, and that while she was 
 happy to play the savage in good health, she wished comforts 
 for her illness. 
 
 "You want to go over there?" he asked quietly. 
 
 "I am alone here a good deal of the time, you know, Eric," 
 she began indirectly. 
 
 "You want to go !" he interrupted with masculine direct- 
 ness. " Very well, then, you shall go ! " 
 
 He rose and strode to his desk, where he busied himself 
 for the evening without speaking. She had it on her lips to 
 say, "But of course I won't leave if you feel like that." 
 She did want to go to her mother's, however, — why not ? 
 
206 THE HEALER 
 
 What more natural? She thought it was her husband's 
 inexplicable moodiness, evidence of his oddity, — this dis- 
 taste he manifested for every form of comfort — mere com- 
 fort. Not luxury, of course ! 
 
 So the child was born in all the comfort of the Colonel's 
 camp, in the same room where the mother had been sick 
 before. 
 
PART THREE 
 
The first time that Holden met Mrs. Goodnow was at his 
 wife's bedside just before the birth of the child. The young 
 wife's pains had come upon her unexpectedly shortly after 
 her removal from the stone cabin, and her husband had been 
 hastily summoned. Unfortunately he was absent — at the 
 Settlement — and it was not xmtil late that night, after his 
 wife had been suffering many hours, that he reached the 
 Eyrie. 
 
 "What is he thinking of," Mrs. Goodnow fumed again 
 and again, "to go off like that when you are sick ! " 
 
 The wife between the paroxysms of her pain defended her 
 husband, — "It's happened before we expected it." 
 
 " It always does ! " 
 
 "He has his work, — his patients." 
 
 "His work!" 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow wanted to send for Dr. Percy, but Helen 
 would not consent. "My husband will not fail me," she 
 said. 
 
 Even in her distress after so many hours of pain she was 
 aware of the meeting between the two enemies, at her bed- 
 side, and conscious of the repetition of the scene that had 
 been enacted there almost two years before. 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow had insisted on sending for old Scotch Nan, 
 who had nursed all the Goodnow children through infancy, 
 p 209 
 
210 THE HEALER 
 
 and had also telegraphed for an obstetrical nurse from a city 
 hospital, when she found that the doctor had no trained 
 nurses at the Spring. With the same curt nod to the frown- 
 ing lady that he had given her on that other occasion, and 
 brushing aside the fussy old Scotchwoman, Holden bent over 
 his wife and looked into her eyes without speaking. He laid 
 his strong bony hand on her brow, and immediately she felt 
 calmer, less afraid. His glance summoned the will in her to 
 the fore, all the powers of her nature, as it had that other 
 time when she was about to meet death. 
 
 "It will be all right, my Nell," he said. 
 
 She tried to speak, to tell him things, — her regret that she 
 had yielded to her mother's suggestion and deserted their 
 nest, the selfishness of her desire for little comforts and the 
 attendance of servants. She whispered with effort. He 
 seemed to understand and soothed her. He had forgiven 
 her this temporary disloyalty to their love and their life. 
 Under the influence of his touch, — his compelling strength 
 and sure will, — she closed her eyes in content. With his 
 arms about her she knew that she was secure, as she had 
 been that other time when she was a girl. 
 
 "I will go back," she murmured to herself, "with his child 
 with me, — and he will forgive my weakness. And we shall 
 never be apart again! " . . . 
 
 When she wakened from the sleep of exhaustion the next 
 morning, and they had put her child into her arms, the old 
 nurse said: — 
 
 "She's a bonny httle thing. Miss Helen!" 
 
 "She!" the mother cried. 
 
 "0' course — it's a fine girl baby." 
 
THE HEALER 211 
 
 "Oh ! " she gasped limply. 
 
 She could not understand how it had happened that his child 
 was not a man child ! Again, it seemed to her in her con- 
 fused state of mind that she had somehow been false to her 
 master in this one great service she had to render him. At 
 last she summoned strength to ask: — 
 
 "The doctor?" 
 
 "He was wanted at the Spring. Another woman took 
 with the pains — they came for him early this morning." 
 
 Another woman claimed him at this moment, which she 
 felt with a touch of jealousy should have been all hers. She 
 asked her mother, who came in at the moment: — 
 
 "Does Eric know it's a girl?" 
 
 " Of course he knows ! " 
 
 When her husband entered the room later she could not 
 tell from his face whether he were pleased or disappointed. 
 He seemed more removed from her than the night before. 
 Other cares had come between her great event and him. He 
 was tender and playful, even gentle with Mrs. Goodnow, 
 but he went away soon to let her rest. 
 
 She had made up her mind to go back to the stone cabin 
 with her child almost at once, but everything opposed her 
 intention. Mrs. Goodnow, who could now display her petty 
 authority, would not hear of it. The child was too delicate 
 and needed every possible care. There would be no room 
 for the two nurses in the cabin, no comforts, not even a supply 
 of h(Jfc water ! So, for one reason or another, she stayed on at 
 the Eyrie through the summer, seeing her husband daily, but 
 never intimately nor for long periods. He was busier than 
 ever, with new patients from the hotels at the Settlement. 
 
212 THE HEALER 
 
 Evidently the conspiracy was succeeding. The friend whom 
 Elport had brought with him was ahnost well ; it had been 
 a cimous and interesting case that demanded a special key, 
 which after patient experimentation the doctor had found. 
 
 There was now a tent-camp imder the trees about the 
 Cove, which Holden described to her humorously, — 
 "Chicken coops everywhere!" And he was experimenting 
 with the new baths, which had been finished, seeking to dis- 
 cover the most effective methods of using them, and thus 
 revive the heahng properties of the old Spring. He was so 
 busy, his mind so occupied, she felt with a pang, that he did 
 not miss her greatly : certainly he did not urge her to return 
 to their home. 
 
 One afternoon she thought to surprise her husband by walk- 
 ing over to the stone cabin and waiting for him there. She 
 escaped her mother and the nurses, and set out by herself 
 through the woods, her heart beatiag fast with excitement. 
 She had a kind of homesickness for the Spring and the old 
 simple Ufe ia her rocky nest upon the cliff, for her garden and 
 the silent hours before the fire ; but most of all for her hus- 
 band, from whom she seemed more separated than the scant 
 mile between the Spring and the Eyrie accounted for. As she 
 neared the end of her path she noticed the familiar curl of 
 blue smoke coming from the squat stone chimney, and a 
 smile stole over her Ups. Eric was at home already. They 
 would have supper together : she might even spend the night 
 in her little chamber above the Lake. The door was ajar ; 
 pushing it open softly she stepped within. As she paused 
 just beyond the threshold, noting the old objects that seemed 
 unfamiliar, she heard a cry. It was a feeble cry, an infant's 
 
THE HEALER 213 
 
 wail, and it came from the imier room. Often during the 
 months of her pregnancy she had lain in that room and dreamed 
 of the child's cry that was to soimd therein some day ! For 
 the moment she felt giddy, mireal. 
 
 She collected herself and walked noiselessly to the door. 
 A yomig woman was lying on the bough bed, trying to nurse 
 a little baby. She seemed ill and worn, and the child was 
 crying fretfully, as if dissatisfied with its mother. Helen 
 tiu-ned and left the cabin, closing the door softly behind her. 
 Below about the sandy beach there were white tents dotted 
 under the green trees. A man and two women in the costume 
 of nurses were passing back and forth on their duties. The 
 quiet grove around the HeaUng Spring had been transformed 
 since she had last looked upon it. . . . Hearing footsteps 
 on the path behind her she turned to see her husband, who 
 with head shghtly bent in the familiar attitude of inner 
 thought, was coming up the path toward the cabin. At 
 sight of her he halted in surprise. 
 
 "Nell! You here!" he exclaimed. She perceived dis- 
 satisfaction in his voice and resented it. "Why did you 
 come?" he demanded more sharply. "And no one with 
 you?" 
 
 " I wanted to see my home," she answered with accusing 
 eyes. "There's some one in there !" 
 
 "Yes," he repUed quickly. "I put a woman in there. 
 She was going to have a child — we could make her more 
 comfortable up here by herself than in a tent." 
 
 "I see," she said dully. It seemed as if he wished to show 
 her that when she had deserted the nest he had made for her, 
 it could be used by any one who needed it. " When was it ? " 
 
214 THE HEALER 
 
 "About six weeks ago — the day after your baby was born. 
 . . . She was a waitress at the hotel. I sent Percy over to 
 look after her when she was first taken sick. When the hotel 
 people found that she was going to have a child, they threw 
 her out of the hotel. So I had her brought over here — 
 there was nothing else to do." 
 
 He explained the event as if he were unconscious of its 
 importance. He had given her home, her room, her bed to a 
 waitress at the hotel, with her child — probably illegitimate, 
 and he thought nothing of it. Prejudices that she never 
 suspected in herself rose in protest. 
 
 She turned into the path to the Eyrie without another 
 word, thinking, "I shall never go back there again — never, 
 never! He did this to punish me !" But she knew that was 
 not true. 
 
 Her husband walked by her side to the Ejrrie, talking about 
 the doings at the Spring, ignoring her trouble — if he per- 
 ceived it. He spoke of the different new patients he was 
 receiving — singular and difficult cases that challenged his 
 mind and his will. For the time he seemed to have forgotten 
 his dislike of strangers, innovation. The exercise of his 
 gift, she could see, was absorbing him more and more, and 
 he was apparently unaware of the change that was taking 
 place in his attitude, in his environment. 
 
 She listened with latent hostility, but made no remark. 
 She thought, "He is like other men — he falls into the 
 trap set for him. We — Percy, Horace Elport, and I — set 
 this trap for him, — baited it !" But she said nothing. And 
 in spite of her hurt and angry mood she was really glad of the 
 success he was having, of the promise of his work. At the 
 
THE HEALER 215 
 
 end of the path she bade him good-by hastily, without a kiss 
 or a touch of the hand, and fled within to the child, — her 
 child she felt now more than ever, — not his ! 
 
 Late in August Mrs. Goodnow began to talk of her depar- 
 ture. Although the relations between her and her daughter 
 never really surmounted the act of revolt that the latter had 
 committed, the child made a strong bond between the two. 
 The old lady spoke of taking the mother and the child 
 back with her, "for a little visit, — why not? " 
 
 Helen wanted to go, but she had not the courage to propose 
 the plan to her husband. It seemed on the surface a small 
 matter. But she suspected that if she should leave now, in 
 the present mood of division between herself and her husband, 
 she might never have courage to return. And he would not 
 come a second time to fetch her from her mother's house ! 
 She could not run that risk. For she loved her husband — 
 her Wild One — and she would not let him slip from her hold 
 in this weak fashion. 
 
 So she said finally to her mother : — 
 
 "I'll not leave Eric now — perhaps later — when it comes 
 right." 
 
 "You don't mean to live up here all your life, I hope," 
 Mrs. Goodnow remarked bluntly. 
 
 "Oh, I hope not — not always. . . . But of course as 
 long as Eric thinks he must stay — " 
 
 "Can't he find soinething to do in a civilized place?" 
 the old woman demanded. " It's no Ufe for a woman — you 
 can't bring children up here ! " 
 
 And she continued with her usual complaint, — the deser- 
 
216 THE HEALER 
 
 tion of herself ,by her children in her old age. She urged 
 Helen to use her influence with her husband to get him to the 
 city, where he might be established in some nook of Suburbia 
 and start a career of profitable fashionable practice, like 
 other sensible men. That was a poor enough outlook for 
 the daughter of her father, to be the wife of a fashionable 
 doctor. But now that she had elected, committed her error, 
 and seemed determined to stick by it, the best should be 
 made of the situation. And the best was a safe and com- 
 fortable berth in Suburbia. 
 
 "Perhaps that will come some day," the wife replied. 
 
 But she was less assured than she had been of what she 
 could do with her Wild One, — how much he would hearken 
 to her desires. Moreover, thanks to Elport and Dr. Percy, 
 there were the new developments at the Spring to be awaited. 
 
 "Well," Mrs. Goodnow grumbled, reluctantly 3delding 
 the point for the present, "at least you'll stay here in the 
 Eyrie, where you can live comfortably and be decent, and 
 not go back to that hut !" 
 
 To this the daughter agreed quite readily. 
 
 "You'll have to have hot water heat put in, and with 
 some alterations this place could be made endurable for the 
 winter." 
 
 So when her mother had begun her elaborate preparations 
 for moving back to the city, packing her ten trunks and 
 marshalling her corps of servants, Helen broached the sub- 
 ject of keeping the Eyrie and making it their home for the 
 coming winter. Somewhat to her surprise her husband fell 
 in with the plan readily. 
 
 "I suppose you would be better off here," he said. 
 
THE HEALER 217 
 
 " It is larger — more comfortable." 
 
 She did not mention the real reason that moved her, as 
 she had refrained from alluding to the presence of that other 
 woman in the stone house. Holden walked about her bed- 
 room, where this talk took place, moodily examining the knick- 
 knacks, the photographs, the lingerie, and toilet articles, 
 with which her chamber had become cluttered in the famil- 
 iar manner. He remarked casually : — 
 
 " Our old cabin will come in useful : we need some place 
 away from the camp for the women." 
 
 It was as if he had meant to stab her, — to plan thus 
 quickly to turn their home, their first nest, with all its mem- 
 ories, into a hospital ! How little sentiment he really had, 
 after all the appearance of it he had shown, for their lovers' 
 intimacy. Her lips tightened and she repeated to herself 
 woman's old saying: "Men care nothing afterward. 
 They merely cheat us with a show of feeling, at first." She 
 watched the father playing with his baby, and wondered if 
 he had any real feeling for his child. He had undressed 
 the infant and was examining its little anatomy with the 
 cool intelligence, the semi-ironical indifference of the scien- 
 tist. 
 
 "Huh, young woman," he was saying, holding the staring 
 baby on one knee, "your occiput is a little flat — we shall 
 have to attend to that later. But on the whole a normal 
 brain, and — " 
 
 "Give her to me!" 
 
 "What do you call her?" he asked, handing the little 
 one over to the mother with a skilled but unaffectionate 
 grasp. 
 
218 THE HEALER 
 
 "I do not call her !" she murmured indignantly. 
 
 "Well, about this place," he remarked, stretching him- 
 self lazily. "What does the Colonel want for it?" 
 
 " I don't know. Mother said he would be perfectly willing 
 to have us occupy it for the winter." 
 
 "I don't do things that way," he answered with a scowl. 
 "I'll buy it of him if he will sell it, — with all the land be- 
 tween here and the Spring." 
 
 "But — " It was on her lips to ask him how he could 
 command such a sum of money as the Eyrie must cost. As 
 she hesitated he looked at her with an unpleasant glint in 
 his gray eyes. 
 
 "How do I happen to have the money? I've earned a 
 lot of money this summer. And Eaton, that old man Elport 
 brought up here, keeps shoving it at me — part of his mania, 
 maybe — wants to get rid of it in big chunks. I suspect 
 he robbed it in the first place, he leaks with it so. And the 
 others would pay — there'll be no trouble about the money." 
 
 "I'm so glad !" she exclaimed, frankly showing her pleas- 
 ure. It would gratify her pride to have her husband buy 
 the property from her family. 
 
 Again that keen, hard glance made her uncomfortable. 
 
 "Glad to find your husband can make money like other 
 men ? It's not a hard trick to make money — if one wants 
 to!" 
 
 She felt that he covered her people with his scorn, but 
 she answered bravely : — 
 
 " I'm glad of course that we shan't have to take the house 
 as a gift." 
 
 "That will never be necessary! I don't take gifts like 
 
THE HEALER 219 
 
 this — " He waved a disdainful hand. "I will ask Elport to 
 speak to your uncle about it the next time he comes to the 
 Lake." 
 
 Thus it was accomplished quite simply. The Colonel 
 set a reasonable price upon his camp, which he was willing 
 enough to sell with all its contents and the land as far as the 
 Healing Spring. 
 
 "The place is yours," Holden announced to his wife when 
 he came in the evening before Mrs. Goodnow departed. 
 "The deed has been made out in your name." 
 
 Helen flushed with pleasure, and even her mother admitted 
 grudgingly: — 
 
 "It's a pretty place, and healthy for summers. But I 
 can't see what you do with yourselves winters." 
 
 "Live — just live 1" the doctor replied laconically. "Did 
 it ever occur to you, madam, that the less fuss you had 
 about you the more you could live ?" 
 
 "I don't call it living 1" the old woman retorted. 
 
II 
 
 Immediately after Mrs. Goodnow's departure workmen 
 came to make the alterations at the Eyrie that mother and 
 daughter had decided upon. Not only a system of heating 
 was put in, but the kitchen quarters were made more com- 
 modious, upper floor part of the main building was finished 
 and plastered, and part of the large veranda enclosed in 
 glass. Helen found an imexpected delight in planning and 
 supervising these improvements. Whether the new home 
 was to be a temporary abode or not, it was her OTvn, she 
 felt, and she was ambitious to make it attractive according 
 to her experience of what a comfortable and dignified home 
 should be. The workmen stayed all that fall imtil after 
 the snow had come, and when they left, the semi-rustic 
 "camp" was hardly recognizable within. Mrs. Goodnow 
 had sent up from the city cloth hangings for the walls, heavy 
 rugs, lamps, and such articles of furniture as the two had 
 decided upon. There was much correspondence between 
 mother and daughter about these house matters and also 
 about servants. Mrs. Goodnow had left three maids, but 
 the cook had proved unsatisfactory, and the young wife, 
 recognizing that a good cook would be the corner-stone of 
 her establishment, had sent to the city for another. 
 
 For the most part her husband did not seem to notice 
 what was going on in the Eyrie when he was at home, which 
 
 220 
 
THE HEALER 221 
 
 was not usually until after dark. Only when the change of 
 cooks was in process he asked ironically if the services of 
 four persons (including Scotch Nan) were necessary to look 
 after the needs of two healthy grown people and a little 
 baby. His wife smiled back at him convincingly, and he 
 let her have her own way without further question in these 
 domestic matters, as he had about the house — which she 
 thought was quite as it should be. Nor was the money 
 question ever raised between them. The bills for the work 
 of alteration had not yet come in, and Helen was untroubled 
 by consideration of expense. She felt that she was not 
 extravagant by nature, and what she was doing with her 
 new home was very simple indeed in comparison with what 
 other people she knew did to make themselves comfortable. 
 Behind it all she had her idea — a plan that she had persist- 
 ently and quietly developed since she had taken the Eyrie. 
 She meant to create a social atmosphere, here in the woods, 
 or as she remarked once to her husband, " Live a little more 
 like other people this year ! " 
 
 For there were now in the neighborhood a few people who 
 could appreciate an orderly and attractive home. The 
 doctor frequently brought Dr. Percy from the Spring for 
 dinner, and also Mr. Eaton, who was now quite himself, — 
 a quiet, gentle, rather dull man of business. He lingered 
 on at the Spring, timorous about himself and life in general. 
 He was immensely grateful to the doctor, who had helped 
 him regain control of his mind, and eager to show his devo- 
 tion to the young wife. Then there was across the Lake 
 a young engineer in charge of the railroad construction work, 
 — a college man by the name of Langton, who got to the 
 
THE HEALER 
 
 Eyrie usually for Sundays. There came also, later in the 
 winter, a mining man who had been brought down from the 
 new camps ill with typhoid, and a melancholy young actor 
 who had come into the woods for his vacation and had 
 attached himself to the doctor. He was of a morbid and 
 sentimental nature, and very confiding with women. Helen 
 felt that she could do something for him. 
 
 These, whom the young wife had sifted from her husband's 
 patients at the Spring as the men who could sit comfortably 
 in a drawing-room and knew how to take a woman in to 
 dinner, came more and more to the Eyrie. They would drop 
 in for tea in the afternoon, stay on for the late dinner, and 
 spend the evening about the fire, talking, playing games, 
 reading. When the winter storms began to drift the snow 
 high in the woods, the large living room of the Eyrie was a 
 warm, comfortable, civilized haven in the wilderness, as 
 the young wife meant it should be. 
 
 The lights of Blakely — as they now called the new town 
 — twinkled nightly in friendly fashion across the narrow 
 arm of the bay. Among them were a few large blue stars — 
 the new electric arc lamps, — and these Helen liked to watch 
 as they broke out across the dark water just at twilight. 
 There seemed to her something warm and human in these 
 beckoning lights from the little town, reminding her of the 
 large world beyond the woods. After the guests had de- 
 parted for the night she would stay for a little while on the 
 veranda above the Lake, watching these earthly stars. 
 Sometimes a train for the south would wind its fiery way 
 about the further shore, whistling as it sped out of the little 
 settlement and disappeared in the cut beyond. Often she 
 
THE HEALER 223 
 
 would waken in the dark nights and hear the throaty whistle 
 of a locomotive across the Lake. In the frozen silence of 
 the winter air it had a cheery, brave note, — a robust 
 voice. The call from the steel throat of the locomotive 
 spoke of the city, Ufe, and the haunts of men, to which the 
 engine with its burden of people was rushing. She would 
 turn to look at the child, sleeping in its cot by her side, and 
 with a smile of confidence in the future and all it held for 
 them both, sink once more to sleep. She came to know these 
 engine calls so that she could distinguish the individual 
 voices. The loud, trimnphant, hoarse voice was that of the 
 northern express — "The North Star," as it was named in 
 the poetry of the railroad folder — which passed through 
 the Settlement in the early morning long before the gray 
 dawn came over the frozen Lake. She listened with a pecul- 
 iar interest to this herald of the great world beyond, calling 
 to her as it sped past. 
 
 It was not often that the doctor's wife visited the Healing 
 Spring, although the new path through the woods was short 
 and kept well broken out by the men. She found much 
 absorbing occupation in her new, more complicated house- 
 hold, in her child, and in her music, which now that she 
 had a piano she had resumed. The men talked shop, as they 
 called it, at dinner, and she listened, and felt that she knew 
 all that was going on. But one day little Dr. Percy insisted 
 on her seeing the new cabin he had built for himself on the 
 ledge above the Spring, and afterwards they went down to 
 the hospital to see the new mess room, — a long low stone 
 building with a thatched roof where the nurses were to live. 
 
224 THE HEALER 
 
 There was also a new cabin, — a pretty little Swiss affair 
 with broad dark eaves, on which the sentimental actor was 
 working. These new buildings, and the bath-house, gave 
 an air of permanent habitation to the grove. And the place 
 had always the busy aspect of people coming and going, of 
 work pushing forward, altogether unlike the snowy quiet 
 of the previous winter. 
 
 Some of the siunmer patients had stayed on and new ones 
 had come. A forlorn woman — a school teacher — was 
 occupying the little stone cabin on the cliff. These days 
 Helen never went that way. 
 
 "The place has changed a lot, hasn't it?" Dr. Percy 
 observed. 
 
 "Oh, yes, it has changed !" 
 
 She thought of the day when the fever patient had stumbled 
 into the camp, and she had helped her husband get him to 
 bed. 
 
 "What did I tell you? . . . We might easily have more 
 patients than we could handle, but the doctor won't take 
 'em. He turned away a woman that came all the way 
 from New York last week — said she wanted too much 
 attention ! And then he lets that school teacher stay, — 
 has had her here for five months. . . . But if he is going 
 to keep on building like this, he will have to make the 
 patients pay more, at least some of them ! " 
 
 "Of course," she agreed, and added after reflection, "It's 
 only right they should. There are hospitals and places for 
 those who can't." 
 
 "And it makes 'em think more of what you do for them 
 if they have to pay a good price for it ! " 
 
THE HEALER 225 
 
 Helen laughed at the observation, which seemed to her 
 nothing more than good human sense. The next time that 
 she and her husband were alone together she asked him why- 
 he had refused to accept the New York lady as a patient. 
 
 "You mean that Mrs. Lord? . . . She was an idle, 
 foolish woman, who brought her troubles on herself — " 
 
 "I have heard you say most sick people do !" 
 
 " She was the kind who did not want really to face them — 
 there's no cure for that sort. I can't waste my time over 
 them. Let her go to a sanitarium and be nursed." 
 
 "But all fashionable women are not worthless," she 
 protested. " And if you refuse rich and fashionable women, 
 how can you make money ? " 
 
 It was a pertinent question, for the house expenses in the 
 Eyrie were necessarily large and the bills for the alteration 
 had come in — a few hundred dollars, not at all excessive, 
 the young wife felt, but they must be paid. She had an 
 interest in her father's fortune which would come to her after 
 her mother's death, and she saw no reason why she should 
 not take the money that Mrs. Goodnow offered her now. But 
 her husband would not hear of it. 
 
 If, then, because of pride or any theory about money and 
 living, he refused to let her enjoy her own money, he must of 
 course provide what was necessary himself. There was an 
 inescapable logic to this, she felt, and she waited placidly 
 for the solution he would find for the universal problem. 
 She had already ordered some dresses and personal articles 
 through her mother, who had paid for them. She did not 
 tell her husband of these expenses. 
 
 The bills remained upon the doctor's private desk for some 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE HEALER 
 
 weeks. She knew that they weighed upon his mind, al- 
 though he never mentioned them. At last they disappeared, 
 were paid, she presumed, as bills must be paid in the end. 
 Some new patients came to the Spring, of the sort who could 
 amply pay for their entertainment, and this time they were 
 not refused. At first she felt a little guilty : she had in a 
 sense forced her husband to do something against his prin- 
 ciples. But when she considered the matter more fully, she 
 was sure that the result was inevitable — and quite clear 
 and right. Even here on the edge of the wilderness economic 
 laws might not be evaded. The bargain and sale method 
 of conducting human relations had been too long established 
 in the world not to be sound fundamentally. 
 
 She was proud that her husband could already attract 
 people from a distance who were willing to pay considerable 
 fees for his services. Unconsciously he was growing more 
 important in her eyes, as he undoubtedly had become to 
 Dr. Percy, Mr. Eaton, and the other members of their little 
 group since he had developed a capacity for earning 
 money. . . . 
 
 Thus the bills were paid, and money was forthcoming 
 in plenty for the needs of the comfortable establishment the 
 young wife had created at the Eyrie. And the Wild One was 
 becoming properly tamed, as it is necessary with Wild Ones, 
 through marriage. The gift of the Healer was being ap- 
 praised in the markets of the world, and it promised to bring 
 a good price to its possessor and those bound to him. 
 
Ill 
 
 That their life had greatly changed the doctor's wife might 
 easily perceive on her infrequent visits to the Healing Spring, 
 — a transformation within one short year. There were the 
 new buildings, the presence of strange faces, — sophisticated 
 city patients, nurses, and attendants. There was more than 
 this of change, — more than she was aware of, — more than 
 the change of homes from the stone cabin upon the lonely 
 cliff to the comfortable Eyrie, more than the subtle change 
 from being the worshipped mistress of her wild lover to 
 becoming the mother of his child. More than in the bustle 
 of the hospital camp, the bustle of the Settlement and the 
 Lake. There was change in her, in him, merely reflected 
 in the face of their changed environment. 
 
 Change, always change in the restless dance of will and 
 desire, — it is the abiding condition of being. Change, 
 endless, eternal, superficial, yet cataclysmically rending of 
 souls ! Change from the budding tree to the fading leaf, 
 from the freezing water to the rotting ice, from the fluid 
 charm of youth with its dream to the fixed habit of maturity 
 with its reality, — life itself is but the flux of change. . . . 
 
 The young wife and mother, even in her growing pre- 
 occupations with household and child, realized acutely at 
 times the change that had come over her. She regretted 
 those moments that had somehow slipped by her into obhvion, 
 
 227 
 
228 THE HEALER 
 
 and could never be reborn. She remembered that intimate 
 solitude in which she had lived with her husband the winter 
 before in their little stone cabin, — the long evenings of 
 talk and silent musing before the fire, the long nights of love 
 and worship, the long days in the radiance of the snowy 
 wilderness, the expeditions she had made with her man 
 shoulder to shoulder over the frozen white floor of the Lake 
 up into the distant recesses of the wilderness. And these, 
 she felt, were but the outer facts : the inner truth was so 
 much deeper, as the change of the spirit within her was so 
 much more poignant, than the change of her environment, 
 though inexpressible in words. Never, it seemed to her, had 
 man and woman been as close as they had been. They had 
 breathed and thought and acted as one ! That was the 
 romance she had dreamed in her girl's heart, — the promise 
 which he had fulfilled for her, — that each for each should 
 be all in all, — two yet always one. Thus it had been for 
 those few precious months, until — ' 
 
 Ah ! she sighed. It was the penalty of life : the dream 
 could never endure. It must always realize itself in the pro- 
 saic, as at present. The lover must become plain husband ; 
 the God, mere man. That was the universal experience 
 according to the testimony of all good women. Love of the 
 sort they two had known might not last any more than 
 the heavenly radiance of gold and rose and purple upon the 
 peak of Macatawa at dawn could last throughout the day 
 when the sun shone at a different angle. It was given to the 
 human heart — the woman's heart — to desire and expe- 
 rience, and then to sigh for what had been. ... At least, 
 she comforted herself, the life they now led was "more 
 
THE HEALER 229 
 
 normal." Strange paradox of the woman nature — to seek 
 the normal and sigh for the supernal, to lap herself in com- 
 fort and dream of the stars ! 
 
 Her husband rose before it was really light, as he always 
 had done, and left her dozing in her big soft bed, while he 
 got his simple breakfast by himself. He would not have the 
 servants roused, for he disliked all personal service, and 
 years of living alone had made these tasks seem light to him. 
 Then he went for the day to the Spring. Sometimes the wife 
 wondered about him after he had left her side — pondered 
 the change in him. Surely he was more "like other people" 
 nowadays, as she had often wished he might be. He was 
 the busy doctor, preoccupied with his duties, thinking of 
 his patients, — their needs and troubles, — planning im- 
 provements at the hospital camp he was fast building up. 
 So far he did not differ much from the ordinary professional 
 or business man she had known in the city : he worked 
 hard and returned to his home at night, weary and silent. 
 But it was not the change in the routine of the day that 
 she thought of : it was the change in the man, — especially 
 towards herself. The change in her lover. 
 
 Gradually the doctor was called less and less to the distant 
 camps. The railroad had brought other doctors and con- 
 veniences of civiUzation into the woods, so that his services 
 were not imperative, and he preferred now to have the sick 
 come to him at the Spring. Occasionally in answer to some 
 special call of need — or to satisfy his own restless instinct 
 for the wilds — he would bind on his long shoes, strap his 
 medical pack on his back, and gun in hand start forth over 
 the white Lake for the snowy hills — alone. He never asked 
 
230 THE HEALER 
 
 her to go with him, never suggested making one of their old 
 expeditions together. He would merely send word from the 
 Spring by Gray Jack or Dr. Percy not to expect him that day. 
 Then she would see him plodding steadily through the snow, 
 slightly bent forward against the wind, the stern, immobile 
 face with the long locks frozen about the brow — alone ! 
 
 A day, sometimes two or even three, would pass before 
 his return. The wife felt that these absences were times of 
 reversion to the old wild mood of revolt, — revolt now against 
 her and all that had come over his hfe and his home and his 
 Healing Spring. He never spoke to her in these moods, — 
 never complained nor criticised her — merely disappeared, 
 to be with himself, — as if he felt the need of regaining in 
 the snowy solitude of the wilderness the sight of some ideal 
 that was becoming obscured in him, was fading from his 
 daily horizon. ... So she saw him set forth with a sense of 
 jealousy and fear and was anxious while he was away — 
 she even asked herself if he would come back ! Some day, 
 she feared, the call of his own moody spirit would be too 
 strong, would make him abandon altogether the life he was 
 now living, leave her and their child, his sick and his Spring, 
 and strike out again for a new world. And then she would 
 regret her part in weaving the silken cords that bound her 
 Wild One to her and life as it is ! 
 
 But he came back. 
 
 What did the man think by himself? Was he aware of 
 the change, the drift of the current in which he was caught ? 
 He who was so firm of will, so convinced of his personal 
 force ! For change was snaring him, turning his purposes 
 slyly to something other than he had willed. He was becom- 
 
THE HEALER 231 
 
 ing more and more the modem man of medicine, — the success- 
 ful practising physician, half trickster, half healer, — running 
 an hotel for the rich sick, selling his gift for the thirty pieces 
 of silver, bit by bit. Not all of that yet ! But the current 
 was drifting him fast into the inevitable. Already he took 
 "paying patients," not merely as a grudging concession to 
 their special needs, but because he must, because he had need 
 of their money to meet his expenses, and need of the fame 
 they might spread of him in order to lure others of their kind 
 to his Healing Spring. No longer did he work for pure joy 
 in his gift, with the interest of science and love and pride. 
 He strove to give good measure for the pay he took — the 
 tradesman's honor. Cheap bargain with the soul. . . . 
 
 There were still ip. his simpler cabins the poorer patients, 
 the derelicts of the wilderness ; but it would not be long before 
 these must disappear. For rich and poor will not mingle 
 even in sickness and death. The Healing Spring might 
 yield its secret once more, but it would yield it for those 
 who had money in their purse to pay. 
 
 What then of that lofty Ideal — that ardent desire to 
 pour out the healing water for all in need? What of all 
 Ideals ? Pure visions of another world, illusions in this one. 
 Born in the heart of youth, they burn feverishly, urging 
 youth towards distant goals; but in manhood they are 
 found buried beneath the dust of conformity and compro- 
 mise. For this Healer the dust was already gathering on his 
 horizon, and he was uneasily aware of it. In his lonely 
 vigils in the frozen forest was he debating with himself the 
 reasonableness of compromise, or darkly thinking of breaking 
 the silken cords about his feet and girding himself once 
 
232 THE HEALER 
 
 more for flight into the utter solitude of wilderness or city, 
 there to be at peace and work his will ? 
 
 A man's will must prevail, — that he had told his wife 
 was the secret of the gift — pure will ! He poured a stronger 
 will into the weakened bodies of his sick to support their 
 enfeebled wills. And now was circumstance bending this 
 strong, free will? Was change sapping it? Change leads 
 ever to more change in the endless mood of time, — change 
 of act to change of circumstance and change of self. So the 
 moment comes when the initiative of man ceases to be. 
 He loses the power to act surely, to grasp his Ideal, to make 
 something of it endure through him. . . . When is a man 
 free? When has his will bent already to circumstance? 
 The passing of money between men, immemorial bargain of 
 power, is a slight thing ; the change from shelter to shelter 
 is a slight thing ; but the current of change runs, and with 
 a volume finally unopposable by mortal man. At all mo- 
 ments until the last he is conscious of his divine power 
 of will, — the freedom to create. And then the power has 
 gone ! Change has fixed him fast in fate. . . . Meanwhile, 
 as they said of the doctor, — those who watched the young 
 healer with the marvellous gift, — "He is doing a great work 
 and he will surely do a greater before he dies : he will be- 
 come celebrated, famous for his cures, for his contributions 
 to the art of healing." 
 
 At any rate he came back to his work, to his wife and 
 child. And the waiting woman, relieved in her heart by 
 his appearance, found him gentler, softer, — more easily 
 "tamed" after these sohtary wanderings. . . . 
 
THE HEALER 233 
 
 "Where have you been?" she demanded on one occasion 
 when he appeared about twilight after a two days' absence. 
 
 "Up in the woods," he replied vaguely. 
 
 He flung himself down dumbly before the blazing fire and 
 lay there with closed eyes, weary and stiff. She made coffee 
 for him over the fire as she used to the winter before when 
 they returned from their long expeditions together, and then 
 while he dozed in the heat she played to him softly passages 
 from operas that she had heard in her other life and loved. 
 Their flaming notes brought back scenes of that past, desires, 
 and made her restless, until she broke off with a harsh chord, 
 went back to the fire, and knelt there beside her husband. 
 
 "Why do you always leave me behind, Eric ?" 
 
 He opened his eyes and looked at her steadily for several 
 moments without reply. There was something in those 
 still, piercing eyes that made her shrink, and yet she per- 
 sisted. 
 
 "Why don't you take me with you, Eric? I'm strong 
 and well now — stronger than I have ever been ! " 
 
 "I did not think that you cared to go this winter," he 
 said slowly. 
 
 "Of course I care — I want to be with you more !" 
 
 "We are together." 
 
 "But not as we used to be — I want to be with you as we 
 used to be, just we two !" 
 
 "You seemed to find that too lonely." 
 
 She knew that he was thinking of how she had left their 
 nest when the child came, and it seemed to her unjust. She 
 was silent, and then with an irresistible impulse there burst 
 from her the desire that she had been secretly nursing. 
 
234 THE HEALER 
 
 "If you would only take me away somewhere — abroad !" 
 
 "Abroad?" 
 
 "Just for a little while, — to London and Paris and Rome 
 and Vienna." She spoke the names slowly, with the savor 
 of romantic pleasure. 
 
 "Why?" he demanded with smiling lips. 
 
 "To see something ! . . . To hve — where there is music 
 
 — to live," she murmured. 
 
 He said nothing, but he still smiled. She bent closer to 
 him, coaxingly. 
 
 "Why not, Eric? ... For a little while — a few 
 months?" 
 
 "You are very beautiful," he replied irrelevantly. Then 
 he drew her towards him, to the floor by his side, and kissed 
 her. Still smiling, he said, "So you want a little taste 
 of the world, — want to go back where there is music, life, 
 people !" 
 
 "Yes !" she exclaimed, yielding to his caress, her lips meet- 
 ing his, but her mind still aglow with her own desire. "And 
 you will take me — just for a little while ?" 
 
 She smoothed his hair with her hand and her lips formed 
 in a cajoling smile. She was soft and yielding in his arms, 
 
 — a little, light, delicate creature, in shimmering silk and 
 soft lace. He held her pretty head away from his face and 
 studied its eager expression. 
 
 " How about my work — the patients ? " he asked. 
 "Dr. Percy could look after them for a little while." 
 She did not then utter the thought that was also in her 
 mind, — the half-formed intention not to let him come back 
 again into the empty wilderness. Much might happen 
 
THE HEALER 235 
 
 for them, once they were out in the large world. She merely 
 added, coaxingly, "You could manage that!" 
 
 "And the baby?" 
 
 "Oh, we'll take her — or leave her with mother." 
 
 He laughed loudly, half raising himself and supporting 
 his weight on his elbow. 
 
 "You've thought it all out 1 " 
 
 "Of course — I've been planning it for some time," she 
 said daringly. "I'm so lonely — have so much time to 
 think." 
 
 "Lonely!" 
 
 Her hair fell over his arm in a wave, — a golden ripple 
 of fine silk. The loose gown she wore parted at the neck, 
 revealing her pretty shoulders and her rounded breasts, — 
 the formed woman within its silky folds. 
 
 "God I" he exclaimed. "You are so sweet !" 
 
 He held her away from him, his glittering eyes devouring 
 her fresh young loveliness as if he would not miss one item 
 of the feast. 
 
 "Am I? . . . Do you love me — still?" she murmured. 
 
 There was something in her husband's attitude, in the 
 expression of his%ungry eyes, that she had never before 
 been conscious of. It was an intense appetite of the eyes, 
 troubling, disturbing, and yet intoxicating to her. He 
 seemed to uncover her beauty — see not her, but merely 
 the woman in her — the creature of flesh and color and form. 
 
 But he loved her still, — desired her — her heart sang tri- 
 umphantly. She could still make him do what she wished. 
 Her woman's control of her Wild One — her former master 
 — was complete. 
 
236 THE HEALER 
 
 "We shall be very happy over there by ourselves," she 
 mused. "It will be as it was before — ^ as it was at first, 
 when we are always together again. I'll show you all the 
 places and things I've seen !" 
 
 His face came nearer to hers. It was illuminated by the 
 ruddy light of the fire. It was no longer weary and worn, 
 with lines, but full of fife and warmth, of passion. Yet he 
 answered her with that same cold voice. 
 
 "Soyou'U show me things — all you have seen ? . . . We 
 must go ! We must get you music and life — what you 
 want. . . . Come !" 
 
 His lips were upon hers. He was crushing her sweet body 
 to him. And even in the intoxication of this passionate mo- 
 ment, while she joyously yielded to him, she felt that subtle 
 sense of power, chiming triumphantly in her little brain, 
 elating her. Her heart sang the refrain: — 
 
 "He is mine ! He is mine ! He is mine!" 
 
 Waking that night in her warm bed she heard the throaty 
 whistle of the North Star Express, calling across the Lake 
 to her, "Come with me!" and she answered it with a 
 contented smile, "I am coming — soon !" 
 
 Afterwards she lay snuggled in her pillows, unable to sleep, 
 thinking of those passionate moments in the twihght, think- 
 ing of this other man who had then been revealed in her Wild 
 One. A man more like ordinary men as she supposed them 
 to be — not the lover and the poet. She missed the lover 
 and the poet, however, with whom she had tramped the 
 wilderness shoulder to shoulder, — comrades. That love 
 she had tasted at first, — tender, adoring, controlled, — 
 
THE HEALER 237 
 
 that, too, had been wonderful. She remembered the night 
 her husband had spent guarding her, keeping the fire alight 
 to warm her while she slept under the fir tree in her snow bed. 
 Then he was all reverence for the tender woman, who had 
 deigned to come to him from afar. Were they never to know 
 such moments again? . . . Now he was man, strong and 
 sensual, like other men. . . . Life went on in change, and 
 the rare beauty that was possible to it somehow faded inevi- 
 tably along the way. The woman sighed. 
 
 So it seemed that if their first child had been gotten of 
 the spirit, in a cloudland of worship with reverence, this 
 second one would be gotten of the body in a moment of 
 passion, when there was no union of man and woman in 
 spirit. Nevertheless, with a smile on her sweet young lips 
 the wife slept at last, content with what she had. 
 
IV 
 
 That spring they went to the city. 
 
 There were, of course, many compelling reasons why they 
 should go, as the young wife easily proved to her husband 
 in his more yielding moods. Mrs. Goodnow, who had been 
 ailing all the winter, naturally wished to see her daughter 
 and her grandchild. The sister was to be married. There 
 were clothes to be got for herself and the child. Besides, 
 she said boldly, she needed the change : they both needed 
 it. And now that there was prospect of her having another 
 child this was the time to leave, if ever. 
 
 Nevertheless, the doctor put off the journey from time to 
 time with one excuse or another. Dr. Percy must have his 
 vacation. When he returned, he brought with him several 
 troublesome patients, who must be watched carefully and 
 started right or sent off. 
 
 The little doctor told Helen that it was important for 
 Holden "to run down to the city for a few weeks and see 
 people, — get to know some of the doctors, who might send 
 him good cases. They are talking at the medical school 
 about our work. I told everybody that the doctor would 
 come in to see them one of these days !" When Helen re- 
 peated this to her husband, he merely laughed. 
 
 Their departure was decided for them at last and was 
 hurried. One day Holden received a telegram from Horace 
 
 238 
 
THE HEALER 239 
 
 Elport asking him to come at once to the city to see him. 
 And what the doctor had not yielded for all his wife's 
 coaxing, he decided upon immediately at the demand of 
 friendship. " Elport needs me," he explained to her. "We 
 will start to-night." 
 
 It gave her some chagrin to reahze that it was loyalty to 
 a friend rather than the wish to please her that had finally 
 moved her husband, but she accepted the kindly intervention 
 of fate and cheerfully made her hurried preparations. They 
 set forth for the Settlement at dusk of a raw windy day at 
 the end of March. The ice still covered the Lake, though 
 the steel runners of the cutter sank into its soft surface and 
 the horse splashed through pools of water. A sullen cloud 
 hung damply over the west, threatening to break into storm. 
 
 "A good time to be leaving !" Helen observed gayly. 
 
 " For you any time would be good for leaving." 
 
 "Don't say that !" she protested. "I love the Lake, too 
 — but less of course these dead weeks of the year." 
 
 "It is never dead to me," he said. 
 
 The excitement of her mood grew throughout the long jour- 
 ney southwards. Two years before when she had fled from 
 the city into the wilderness with her lover, she thought that 
 her old life had stopped. A woman's life, it had seemed to 
 her then, must be merged into her man's life and find its peace 
 and happiness in him and his activities. But she was begin- 
 ning to perceiye that this was a childish view of marriage. 
 Ever since the germ of another life had first begun in her, her 
 old self as an independent being had gradually awakened, 
 and now was persistently urging its own rights to happiness. 
 
240 THE HEALER 
 
 While she played with her baby and watched the winterish 
 landscape slide past the car window, her husband napped in 
 his seat or stared dumbly at the drab fields. His clothes 
 already seemed quite impossible in the plush magnificence of 
 the Pullman car. The wife determined to put him at 
 once into the hands of a good tailor — the Colonel would 
 be able to recommend one. Except for the matter of clothes 
 her man satisfied her woman's pride : he was strong and 
 powerful, — lean, sinewy, with a singular face, large and 
 brooding. He was a distinguished man in appearance, she 
 was proud to feel. And she began once more the endless 
 weaving of her little dreams. Perhaps they were making 
 this journey for the last time — who could say? Much 
 might happen in the great city. 
 
 The day they arrived the air was soft and warm. Jon- 
 quils and hyacinths were for sale on the streets. Instead of 
 shaggy furs and thick wool, the people wore light clothes of 
 striking and varied color. The child of Suburbia enjoyed 
 the city crowds, the sharp calls, the rumble and the roar of 
 the thronged streets. This was fife, once more ! She forgot 
 the two years' silence in which she had existed. . . . 
 
 The doctor, suffering from the woodsman's smothered 
 sensation within four tight walls, threw open the windows 
 of their hotel room, and standing side by side they looked 
 down the cUff wall to the ribbon-hke street ten stories below, 
 with its jostUng mass of human atoms. 
 
 "Isn't it great !" she cried, in response to the mighty voice 
 of the city. "People, people everywhere ! So many people ! 
 Don't you feel it — life, life!" she chanted with quick 
 abandon, as if intoxicated by the mere presence of human 
 
THE HEALER 241 
 
 beings. Her husband was gazing into the noisy gulf of the 
 street, an ironic smile on his expressive Ups. He, also, seemed 
 affected by the first booming onslaught of the human organ- 
 ism, but he made no remark. 
 
 " Don't you feel it ? " she repeated, dancing on tiptoes, to 
 look farther up the street. 
 
 " I hear it," he murmured. 
 
 But she had turned already from the window in her excite- 
 ment, too restless to hold her mind on anything. She wan- 
 dered aimlessly through the rooms of the little apartment, 
 noting the gleaming nickel and tile of the bath-room, the 
 heavy ornate furniture, — all the dear details of her former 
 existence. Perceiving the telephone instrument on the table, 
 — that symbol of a chattering world, — she ran to it and 
 began turning over the innumerable leaves of the ponderous 
 directory. 
 
 "I'll call up Vera ! She's living in the city this winter," 
 she said to her husband, who was watching her curiously. 
 Her fingers ran swiftly down the crowded columns of names, 
 so many, many thousands of lives with which the little in- 
 strument could put her into immediate communication ! 
 She felt their exciting presence all around her. " And there's 
 Molhe — she's married — what is her name ? " She buried 
 her face in the big book. Out of the cloudland of dream 
 she had come back to the earth, — her earth. 
 
 "And we must see the new plays, the ones Percy told us 
 about. . . . We will go to the theatre every night, won't 
 we ? And the opera — and the pictures, — oh, there is so 
 much ; it will take us months to catch up with life ! " 
 
 While she was listening for the voice of her old friend out of 
 
 B 
 
242 THE HEALER 
 
 the confusing city rumble, her husband disappeared, and she 
 scarcely saw him for the next few days. She did not miss 
 him. Caught up at once in an exciting whirl of httle doings 
 she had no time for reflection. The parlor of their suite was 
 quickly transformed with flowers, packages, notes. Once 
 her touch upon civilization was estabUshed through the tele- 
 phone, old friends and acquaintances sprang up like magic on 
 all sides, and expressed their friendly good-will in the pleasant, 
 conventional manner. 
 
 Thus Vera Travers, coming in early the next morning, 
 found her friend in the midst of confusion. It was like the 
 home-coming of a petted school girl, whose relations delight 
 to indulge with all the sweets so long denied, and the maturer 
 woman, possibly thinking of the last time she had seen her 
 friend, smiled indulgently. She herself had grown larger, 
 more commanding, and in her highly decorative gown, — 
 full fashion of the day, — with her jewelled hands and tinkling 
 ornaments, was the complete figure of a developed city 
 woman. Helen looked at her with growing admiration. 
 
 "How handsome you are. Vera ! And — and — " 
 
 "Healthy?" 
 
 She supplied the word with a gurgling laugh of complacent 
 well being. 
 
 "Yes — but I was going to say — competent!" Helen 
 gasped with a little sigh, as if she divined already what success 
 the other had had in marriage and life. 
 
 "And you?" Vera Travers put her two broad hands 
 around the other's face and examined her shrewdly for be- 
 trayals. "How has it been with my little Rebel ?" 
 
 "Right, of course !" 
 
THE HEALER 243 
 
 "You still like it — your Wild One and his wilderness, 
 love in a stone cot ? " 
 
 "Why — yes." 
 
 "Oh!" Vera laughed slyly. "Love and Freedom and 
 all that — they are still sufficient ? " 
 
 " You must make us a visit this summer and see for your- 
 self." 
 
 " My dear, Gerald in a camp ! You don't know Gerald 
 yet. He can't dress without his man, and what he would 
 do with himself in the woods I haven't the least idea. . . . 
 But I want to see your Wild One — where is he ? " 
 
 "He's gone somewhere to find Mr. Elport." 
 
 "However did you manage to get him to the city? You 
 must have cut his claws — a bit ?" 
 
 "Only one little visit in two years — that isn't much !" 
 
 "Is it only two years since you ran away?" 
 
 "A lot can happen to a woman in two years," the young 
 wife observed sagely. 
 
 "Yes, indeed ! One hves in two years," the older woman 
 admitted. 
 
 In that time she had accepted marriage with her young 
 diplomat, who was no longer serving his country in foreign 
 capitals, but doing something of an elegant nature in banking. 
 Thanks to the wife's generous fortune, they were living very 
 pleasantly in a large house in the proper quarter of the great 
 city. And in return for what Vera had given, she had a child 
 and an increasingly busy social life, besides a handsome 
 husband to look after, — all in two short years. It had not 
 been altogether the hf e she had planned for herself, but whose 
 life ever turned out as it had been planjied ? . At least if it 
 
244 THE HEALER 
 
 had not had much romance in it — Uke Helen's — it was 
 prosperous and socially successful. Vera Travers at thirty 
 was wholly practical : she neither dreamed nor regretted — 
 she lived. 
 
 So she qxiickly shook herseK out of her revery and came to 
 the positive present. 
 
 " How long are you to be here, Nell ? " 
 
 "Oh, I hope a long time — I can't tell." 
 
 " What can I do for you, NelUe ? " she began methodically. 
 " I don't mean shopping and all that — but with people. . . . 
 I'll bring Gerald in this afternoon, and you must have your 
 husband here. Then you will come to us for dinner early 
 next week, Monday — no, we are engaged that evening. 
 Wednesday ? It will have to be Friday, after all ! ... And 
 whom do you want to meet ? " 
 
 "Oh, anybody!" 
 
 "Horace Elport, of course." 
 
 "He's so dear—" 
 
 "He knows everybody — a very useful friend," Vera 
 amended. "And the Jenkses — she's a bore, but your hus- 
 band should see him. He's very important at the medical 
 school. And there's that dehghtful Dr. Farrington ! He 
 married Nina Peters, you remember, and is becoming very 
 well known. You must meet him !" 
 
 Helen had not heard of Dr. Farrington. 
 
 "Your husband will know all about him. He came 
 from the south and everybody is quite crazy over him — so 
 distinguished, such dehghtful manners, my dear, and so 
 good looking ! " 
 
 As Vera Travers continued to name a tentative list of 
 
THE HEALER 245 
 
 her party, Helen realized that dinner was not a mere 
 meeting of friendly souls, but a diplomatic gathering, at 
 which much or little might be accomplished according to 
 the hostess's skill and tact in making her combinations. 
 
 " They are all people you ought to know. They might be 
 useful to you sometime," she concluded. 
 
 "How many people you know !" the younger woman re- 
 marked, half enviously. 
 
 "One can't help it," Vera repUed easily. "But most of 
 them aren't interesting. Gerald doesn't like peculiar people, 
 thinks they are bad form, — just clever people, you know !" 
 
 She laughed pleasantly, as if Gerald's opinions were unique, 
 but not to be considered seriously. 
 
 "Perhaps 'Gerald' won't like us !" 
 
 "Of course he will, little one — I'll tell him to!" And 
 Helen understood that this husband did as he was told to 
 do by his competent wife. 
 
 Then they went to see the child and dallied for some time 
 longer, talking babies and husbands and the gossip of Sub- 
 urbia. The younger woman's admiration for her able friend 
 found expression in a final burst : — 
 
 "You have made so much of your life. Vera !" 
 
 "I have made the best of it," the other remarked with 
 significant emphasis. "And that's about all we married 
 women can do." 
 
 " I wish I knew how to do that ! " 
 
 "Why, what's lacking, little one?" the other inquired 
 with a fine smile. "Yours is all to be made yet." 
 
 "But we live so far from everything !" she cried inarticu- 
 lately. 
 
246 THE HEALER 
 
 "You want to come back to the city ?" 
 
 Helen nodded her head quickly. 
 
 "Ah!" Vera Travers's smile deepened, as if she were 
 thinking again of that morning when she had watched the 
 two lovers disappear into the stream of the city street. 
 
 " It's so lonely up there, and no place to bring up children 
 in!" 
 
 "But would the doctor be content to change — what does 
 he think of it?" 
 
 " Oh, after he got used to it — he's very clever, you know." 
 
 "Of course. Mr. Elport told me he was the ablest doctor 
 he had ever met, and Dr. Jenks said he was the wonder of the 
 school when he was there — but — " 
 
 "All he needs is to get started," the yoimg wife said with 
 assurance. 
 
 " But I thought he had started something up in the woods ? " 
 
 "Oh, that, — the camp!" the wife exclaimed with dis- 
 satisfied scorn. 
 
 "Well, we'll think it over," Vera said slowly in medita- 
 tion. " Don't forget my dinner — Friday ! . . . Good-by, 
 dear!" 
 
 The two women embraced and parted. Nothing of deep 
 importance had been said between them, and yet the young 
 wife had learned much and clarified her own ideas. For in 
 this wise the real education of women is accomplished. 
 
While the two young wives were examining each other 
 after the momentous experience of marriage, Holden was 
 renewing his acquaintance with city ways and sophisticated 
 ideals. He had spent some hours with Horace Elport at one 
 of his clubs, learning the urgent cause of that telegram which 
 had called him to the city in haste. 
 
 Elport had a son, — a boy at college in one of the large 
 universities. Somehow the lad "had got mixed up with a 
 woman" outside his caste, possibly had married her, the 
 father feared. 
 
 " It will ruin his life, if I can't get him away and straighten 
 matters out !" Elport exclaimed, leaning back in his padded 
 chair wearily. "You see how it is. Doctor?" 
 
 Holden nodded, thrust his long hands into his pockets, 
 and stared, unresponsive, before him into the luxurious 
 club-room, which was cosily arranged with little groups of 
 tables and chairs where men might relax and take their ease 
 in privacy. On the walls were many mediocre oil paintings, 
 and on the floors heavy, costly rugs. The doctor examined 
 it all as if it were part of the case presented to him for judg- 
 ment. 
 
 "It's an old story, I'm afraid," the father said with a sigh. 
 
 It was an old story that he had been telling, not so much in 
 
 247 
 
248 THE HEALER 
 
 word as in inference, — the story of his own ambitious mar- 
 riage, his successful efforts to "make good," an easy, complex 
 establishment wherein the child went his way as the parents 
 went theirs, — the "best" schools, the "best" of everything 
 for everybody ! When the mother died, the boy had been 
 sent to a large boarding school, then to college. The father 
 hardly knew him, and then one day this unexpected blow had 
 fallen. 
 
 "Well, what do you want of me?" Holden demanded 
 bluntly. 
 
 " I want you to save the boy for me ! " he cried. 
 
 He had developed a plan of escape. If he could induce 
 the young doctor and his wife " to take the boy abroad some- 
 where for a few months," he would with his lawyer's aid "fix 
 up " the rest — in other words buy the woman, buy a divorce, 
 if necessary, — anything. 
 
 "And the boy?" Holden asked. 
 
 "Oh, you can manage him, I'm sure, once he's out of this 
 creature's reach ! " Elport replied eagerly. " Your wife 
 will be a splendid influence for him. You can go wherever 
 you like, do what you want. . . . You're the one man, 
 Holden — and you'll do it for me ? " 
 
 In his experienced eyes the young doctor had an interesting 
 and powerful personality, which he wished to buy, as he 
 bought other rare and precious things that he needed for one 
 purpose or another. Like many men of his order he thought 
 most highly of "personality," and talked much about it. 
 When misfortune overtook him, he at once considered what 
 "personality" would help him best to extricate himself. 
 
 He dangled skilfully before Holden's eyes the bribes that 
 
THE HEALER 249 
 
 he could offer for this great service, suggested enticing possi- 
 bilities that might result, and when Holden asked, "How 
 about my work at my camp?" proposed that he abandon 
 the Spring altogether. 
 
 " You can do better than that in this city, Holden ! " he 
 said. 
 
 He spoke of a lucrative position in a life insurance company 
 where he had influence, and of obtaining an appointment on 
 the medical staff of a great hospital. 
 
 "The right thing will turn up — you needn't fear!" he 
 said confidently. 
 
 The rich man wanted to buy a special dispensation, a 
 miracle for himself, and he was willing to pay any price. 
 The doctor listened silently to the various suggestions, — 
 the bribes, — until at last he shook his head impatiently: — 
 
 "We'll talk about that later. . . . Why don't you do 
 this thing for the boy yourself? It doesn't seem to be ex- 
 actly a medical case." 
 
 " Oh, I can't get away, — all tied up. ... If I should 
 drop things now, it might be very serious." 
 
 Holden smiled coldly. 
 
 "And I don't believe I could do much for Harry. You 
 know how it is with parents. . . . I'm sure you are the 
 right man to get hold of him — that is the great thing, of 
 course ! . . . He's at a hotel near here — will you let me 
 take you over there now?" 
 
 "Give me the address," Holden replied. "I will see him — 
 and see the woman, too, — that creature," he said mean- 
 ingly. "And if I can help you, I'll let you know afterwards." 
 
 "Good!" the father exclaimed, much relieved. "We must 
 
250 THE HEALER 
 
 act quickly, you know, before the scrape gets out and 
 there's a newspaper scandal and all that ! " . . . 
 
 Holden watched the gray-haired man step into his great 
 car and sink heavily into a padded corner, his brow already 
 furrowed with a fresh care as he directed the driver to another 
 address. Then the young doctor dropped the card Elport 
 had given him into his pocket and turned into the avenue, 
 walking slowly up the city in the direction of the medical 
 school. 
 
 An unknown young doctor from the backwoods might well 
 have been elated at the opportunity offered him to render 
 such a service to a man like Horace Elport. It might easily 
 mean a stepping-stone of huge proportions in a professional 
 career. It was almost as promising as to be called unex- 
 pectedly to attend some public personage in a severe illness 
 and sign newspaper bulletins. But Holden, as he proceeded 
 up the crowded avenue at a leisurely, observing pace, was 
 not thinking of the bribe. He had never before experienced 
 Elport's worldly side as he had this afternoon, and it gave 
 him much to meditate upon. "He must do it himself," he 
 muttered, "if it is to be done !" 
 
 After a time he turned down a quiet side street and stopped 
 before an ugly brick building, — one of a small group of 
 dingy, barrack-like affairs. Within the walls of these build- 
 ings he had spent the most eager years of his young manhood, 
 and as he looked at them again, a wave of old associations 
 flooded his mind, — hopes, ambitions, desires, defeats. The 
 peculiar smell of drugs in the corridors stimulated his visions 
 of the past. He pushed open the door of an upper room 
 where a slight, bald man was bending over a laboratory 
 
THE HEALER 251 
 
 bench with a collection of small glass dishes spread before 
 him. 
 
 "Where the devil did you come from?" the man at the 
 table exclaimed, taking the green shade from his eyes. 
 
 "From the woods, Graham," Holden replied. "Have 
 you found that bug yet ? " 
 
 "Not yet!" the young scientist said placidly with the 
 confident air of a thorough worker. "But I am very near 
 it !" And he plunged at once into a description of his ex- 
 periments and line of investigation. From the next room 
 came a curious noise, like a miniature barnyard, in which 
 were mingled the little squeaks of guinea-pigs with the sub- 
 dued cackle of hens. 
 
 "Your patients?" Holden inquired. 
 
 "Yes, I'm using roosters for the test chiefly," and the 
 scientist continued his explanation. 
 
 For more than five years, as Holden knew, — ever since 
 he had graduated from the medical school, — this quiet little 
 man had been absorbed in one pursuit, — the discovery of 
 an anti-toxin for pneumonia. All these years he had worked 
 here in the strong-smelliag upper room of the laboratory, 
 undisturbed by the clamor of the great city, the flutter of 
 professional ambitions. It was the cleanest passion of ideal- 
 ism known to our day that animated him, — devotion 
 of the medical scientist in piu'suit of diseases and their 
 antidotes. 
 
 Holden listened to his eager discussion of the subject. 
 The familiar apparatus of his own student days reminded 
 him of that period of hope and will; he felt at home once 
 more in the city. This had not been his ideal, but he under- 
 
252 THE HEALER 
 
 stood the man and respected him. Content to live simply, 
 unmarried, on the small salary that was paid for such purely 
 scientific services, he went his way unswervingly in a noisy 
 world, not distracted by trivial ambitions, dreaming the 
 large dream of science, with its sharp outline of infinite 
 detail. 
 
 "Well," Holden commented at the end, "you are doing 
 something worth while — and there's no doubt about it, 
 which is more than most men ever achieve." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know about that !" Graham replied with a 
 dubious smile. "The big prizes always go to the other fel- 
 lows, — men like Farrington, who know how to coin what 
 knowledge they have." 
 
 "Who's Farrington?" 
 
 " One of Jenks's pets — they've appointed him this year 
 to a chair in the school." 
 
 A look of disgust crossed his thin face, and he began the 
 long tale of academic intrigue and diplomacy, revealing 
 another side of the scientist's life. It was the old warfare 
 between the "practical" men, hke Dr. Jenks, who had con- 
 trolled the school hitherto, and the yoimger men, ardent 
 disciples of research, who despised "mere practitioners" and 
 suspected what they called "commercial medicine." The 
 men of the laboratory, forced to live meagrely on small 
 salaries, with no public recognition, became bitter critics of 
 those brethren of the craft who made large incomes and 
 were often in the public eye. 
 
 " They ought not to be allowed to peddle themselves about 
 for big fees when they teach in the school, using their con- 
 nection with us to make money," Graham growled. As 
 
THE HEALER 253 
 
 Holden knew, the others might reply, " Our experience is very 
 valuable to students. . . . The mere investigator, or the 
 teacher, has no knowledge of men, no wide experience of 
 cases, etc." So it went up and down the world, the war- 
 fare of the two ideals, or rather the struggle of the ideal with 
 the comfortable compromises of personal success. And it 
 would always be so as long as man's dual nature created 
 the conflict. Meanwhile, how about aiHng folk, who sought 
 healing for their ills? They were going more and more 
 to all sorts of quacks, mummers of words, faith healers, mind 
 healers, massage tricksters, and bone manipulators. Igno- 
 rant men and women rejected both the scientist and the 
 money-maker. And the healer of true skill and real knowl- 
 edge was not produced in the schools. 
 
 "Those new institutions for research are doing the best 
 work in medicine to-day," the young scientist concluded, 
 "but the state ought to support all such work, and not let 
 men take their bread and butter from some rich man's purse ! 
 One of these days the state will train all the doctors and 
 support research. Then we'll get rid of the Farringtons and 
 the Jenkses along with the rest of the parasites." 
 
 Like many men of his class he was an incipient socialist, 
 trusting to the promise of a larger social ideal to evolve jus- 
 tice and order out of the confusion of the world. 
 
 "You threw it up !" Graham exclaimed at the end. "And 
 how have you succeeded ? I heard you were running some 
 sort of health resort up north. That Uttle ass Percy Farrold 
 was in here this winter, talking a lot about what you did at 
 your camp — what's it like?" 
 
 "Just a camp in the woods," Holden replied. 
 
254 THE HEALER 
 
 " Don't get into the sanitarium business," Graham warned 
 gravely; "that is the last stage of medical prostitution." 
 
 " We are not there yet. We really try to make people well. 
 . . . And we do sometimes. . . . Come and see us !" 
 
 "Perhaps I will, when I have finished this job and have 
 time to take a vacation." 
 
 He adjusted the green shade over his eyes, and with a nod 
 turned back to the laboratory bench. 
 
 Holden slowly retraced his steps to the hotel, meditating 
 on his day. The impression of polished worldliness that 
 Elport, with his selfish panic over his neglected son, his desire 
 to get rid of "the creature" his boy had become involved with, 
 had produced, had been somewhat erased by the sight of 
 Graham at his bench. Yet the yoimg scientist, with his 
 harsh criticisms and ill-concealed envy of his more prosperous 
 colleagues, also revealed a sordid side. The city world 
 whipped men's appetites, it seemed, and sharpened their 
 claws. Doubtless it had a more heroic side, but Holden, 
 passing along the avenue in the twihght stream of hurrying 
 people, longed for the large silence of his wilderness, — the 
 simple, straightforward path of daily fife therein. Not for 
 him the ardors of the scientist, with his far-off, lofty goal, 
 nor the coarse bustle of success, where men sold themselves 
 piece by piece in a meaningless struggle for place ! 
 
 In the morning he would give Elport the answer that was 
 slowly formulating within him, and then go back to his sick 
 about the old Spring. Thus tranquilly he solved the prob- 
 lem of life — to himself. 
 
 At the entrance of the great hotel he met his wife and Vera 
 
THE HEALEE 255 
 
 Travers. Helen's pretty face was flushed : she had been 
 shopping all day with her mother, and the bliss of this 
 woman's sport, of which she had been deprived for two years, 
 with the noise and the movement of the city, filled her with 
 an excitement like wine. Every nerve in her responded to 
 the constant stimulus of sight and sound, and she was talking 
 fast. 
 
 "We're just going to have tea," she explained to her 
 husband. "You must not run away again ! " 
 
 She noticed the shrewd eyes of her friend travelling over 
 the doctor's uncouth figure, from the soft felt hat to the ill- 
 fitting, baggy trousers. She became acutely conscious of the 
 sombre face imder the long hair, and of the slouchy appear- 
 ance of her woodsman husband here in the glittering lobby 
 of the city hotel. She resolved that not another day should 
 go by before a tailor had him in hand. 
 
 Vera Travers was seeking the man beneath the unfavorable 
 exterior. 
 
 "It's rather different," she said, "from the last time we 
 met!" 
 
 He understood and smiled back at her. 
 
 "You were in such a hurry then !" she continued. 
 
 "Was I?" 
 
 "Don't you remember? . . . Men never do, though!" 
 They drifted on through the crowded corridors to a lofty, 
 gaudy tea room, — "the Versailles room," — where to the ac- 
 companiment of an excellent small orchestra a few hun- 
 dreds of people were drinking tea, eating, and trying to talk 
 to one another or amusing themselves by staring at their 
 neighbors. A tall, handsome, perfectly attired man rose 
 
256 THE HEALER 
 
 from one of the small tables that he had been holding for 
 the party. 
 
 "Gerald," Vera Travers mmmured, "this is that famous 
 doctor who married Nell !" 
 
 "Glad to meet you!" 
 
 It might have been the broker who married Sue, or the 
 lawyer who married May, — it was all the same to Mr. Gerald 
 Travers, "who did something in banking." He gave a 
 shapely white hand to the doctor, his placid healthy face 
 saying plainly enough, "What queer ducks Vera does 
 get hold of ! " He was an amiable husband, however, and 
 fully conscious of his indebtedness to his generous wife. So 
 he tried his best to make himself agreeable to his wife's 
 friends, whoever they might be. He industriously pointed 
 out to Helen the notabilities of the city to be seen at the 
 neighboring tables, tagging them all quite correctly, as he had 
 learned to do in the diplomatic service. And he ordered a 
 new fashion of tea and displayed an unusual intelligence 
 about cakes, which he had also acquired in the service of his 
 coimtry. 
 
 Holden gave him a sharp glance or two, as if he were asking 
 himself how Vera, who seemed to be the least foolish of 
 women, could have taken to herself such an obvious parasite. 
 The wife beamed sympathetically out of her fine eyes upon 
 her conventional husband. She was shrewd enough to divine 
 exactly what the doctor was thinking about Gerald Travers, 
 but she knew what Gerald was as a husband. Her mar- 
 riage was not romance, but it was good sense. She was 
 content. 
 
 Turning upon Holden she seemed to challenge him with 
 
THE HEALER 257 
 
 her eyes, as though to say, "Have you done better for my 
 little Nell with your romance?" 
 
 " Helen seems to be so glad to get back to the city — she's 
 like a child out of school !" she observed softly. 
 
 "Yes," the doctor answered, looking at his wife, who ap- 
 parently did not find Gerald Travers in the least dull, " Helen 
 likes the noise." 
 
 He glanced about the large room, with its pretentious 
 elegance, false pillars of stucco, bronze ornaments, thick rugs 
 and imitation tapestries, and at the people who were eating 
 and gossiping, crowded together in the hot place at little 
 tables. He examined these poor human beings with the 
 sternly professional eye of the doctor, who could detect secret 
 vices, hidden little indulgences, — could read the signs of 
 outraged nature under the lines of the flesh. 
 
 " You mustn't be too hard on us," Vera Travers remarked. 
 "We don't spend all our time like this, and we aren't all 
 silly and weak." 
 
 "I didn't say so." 
 
 "You looked it." 
 
 Travers and Helen were debating the worth of a certain con- 
 fection that the waiter was holding towards them. The music 
 was tinkling forth voluptuous passages from a new opera. 
 A throng of people surged through the room, seeking places. 
 
 "Women, you know," Vera continued, "can't keep always 
 on the heights — nor men either, for that matter ! " 
 
 The doctor refused the refreshment proffered by the waiter, 
 and did not reply to this observation. 
 
 "Are you going to keep Helen up there in your fastness 
 much longer?" she ventured. 
 
258 THE HEALER 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " She has so many friends here — she belongs here. " 
 
 "And I belong there." 
 
 "Can't you find a compromise?" 
 
 Holden shrugged his shoulders expressively, observing 
 casually: — 
 
 " I expect to go back to the Lake to-morrow — for good. " 
 
 "Oh !" Vera Travers cried, with unfeigned alarm. "And 
 my dinner party? ... Of course you will do nothing of 
 the sort." 
 
 The two exchanged a challenge. 
 
 "Don't you think," Vera murmured gently, "that a man 
 who marries a woman, — a woman like Helen, — owes some- 
 thing to his wife ? " 
 
 " Owes what ? " Holden demanded bluntly. 
 
 " Many things ! Consideration — regard for her happi- 
 ness — her wishes — " 
 
 " If she loves a man, her happiness must be his happiness." 
 
 " Or his happiness her happiness — which ? " she demanded 
 with a lingering smile. " You are all egotists ! " 
 
 Again the doctor shrugged his heavy shoulders, as if he 
 disdained this trivial word play, but there lingered on his 
 face a look of doubt. The woman's thrust had pricked 
 home. 
 
 "At any rate," the lady concluded, masterfully, "you are 
 going to dine with us on Friday and meet some pleasant 
 people you ought to know ! " With a final smile of assurance 
 she was turning to the others, when the doctor remarked 
 suddenly: — 
 
 " Do you see that woman at the next table — the one witb 
 
THE HEALER 259 
 
 the long plumes ? Look at her hands — they are claws ! 
 The hands of a degenerate. If that woman is not watched, 
 she will commit a crime some day — if she hasn't already." 
 
 " That is Mrs. Noble Setton — old Bernard Lashman's 
 youngest daughter," Mrs. Travers replied in a low tone that 
 was meant to convey reproof. 
 
 "Who's he?" the doctor asked indifferently. 
 
 This time it was Mrs. Travers who shrugged her shoulders 
 and did not answer. Presently Holden rose from his seat 
 and with a muttered " Good-by ! " strode recklessly out 
 of the crowded room, hastily pulling down his old soft hat 
 before he reached the door. The people at the little tables 
 looked up as he passed and spoke to one another. . . . 
 
 Decidedly a difficult man to be married to, Vera Travers 
 said to herself. She looked thoughtfully at the placid coun- 
 tenance of her Gerald and congratulated herself again. 
 " Poor Nell ! " she murmured, shaking her head. 
 
 Yet she liked the man. He might be good for anything — 
 but for a husband ! 
 
VI 
 
 Nevertheless, the Wild One, imperfectly tamed as Vera 
 Travers now realized, was found in her drawing-room on tlie 
 Friday evening with his pretty wife. The solution to the 
 puzzle that his friend Elport had propounded had not been 
 as easy to discover as he had expected. It had occasioned 
 a brief journey to the college town where young Elport's 
 siren resided, and several interviews of a perplexing nature. 
 Possibly, also, that remark of Vera Travers concerning a 
 wife's happiness had made its way into the inner conscious- 
 ness of the Wild One, and he was trying in a groping manner 
 to discover what his young wife, — his two years' companion, 
 — really desired for herself. At any rate these last days he 
 had said nothing about returning to the Lake, had occupied 
 himself variously while his wife shopped and amused herself 
 with old friends, and also had gone submissively wherever she 
 had wished, — as to-night. 
 
 He sat glumly in a corner of the pretty drawing-room on one 
 of the little gold chairs that threatened to break beneath his 
 vigorous body, and looked over the company. They had been 
 gathered for some time, and there was visible among the 
 dozen guests the fatal signs of a pre-dinner boredom, which a 
 hostess justly fears. Yet they waited for Someone, and at 
 last he came. The man at the door of the room announced 
 in a loud voice that acted like an electric shock upon the dull 
 gathering, "Dr. and Mrs. Farrington !" 
 
 260 
 
THE HEALER 261 
 
 A swarthy, bearded man with keen little black eyes was 
 bowing low over his hostess's hand and saying, while his eyes 
 already roamed past her into the peopled room: — 
 
 "So sorry ! Nina telephoned you ?" 
 
 "No need — I saw it in the papers this morning." 
 
 It had been announced in the press that Dr. Eliot Farring- 
 ton had been called to Washington to attend a well-known 
 public man, who had fallen suddenly ill after a banquet. 
 Such little items of his personal movements often found their 
 way into the newspapers and served to keep the great general 
 public aware of his name. His enemies said that his secre- 
 tary informed the reporters of all his doings, but of course 
 a man of Farrington's prominence did not have to use such 
 crude methods. 
 
 "I was lucky to get here at all!" he continued with a 
 winning smile. 
 
 "Something was the matter with our car, Vera," Mrs. 
 Farrington remarked in a loud, positive voice. " It positively 
 crawled." 
 
 If Dr. Farrington with his handsome head of black hair just 
 turning gray presented a picture of worldly elegance, his wife 
 was a mere substantial lump of a woman with a plain face, 
 a coarse complexion, and blunt manners. Yet she came of a 
 very good family — much better than her husband's — and 
 she had used her considerable social connection to advance 
 her husband as far and fast as possible. Her large personal 
 energy was doing its part valiantly in pushing the family 
 cart : she was one of those wives who have their husbands' 
 careers a little too obviously on their minds. 
 
 4s for Dr. Eliot Farrington himself, he was a good example 
 
262 THE HEALER 
 
 of the new doctor, to be found perhaps in its full develop- 
 ment only in the United States. There was not left in him 
 the slightest trace of the barber-surgeon period of the pro- 
 fession — no obsequiousness, no sense of social inferiority 
 to anybody. Nor was he of the familiar type of family doc- 
 tor, although his field was general medicine. Elegant in 
 appearance, distinguished in manner, especially with women, 
 he was what Gerald Travers recognized as an " all-round man 
 of the world" and enthusiastically excepted from the list of 
 freaks that his wife occasionally expected him to endure at 
 one of her "queer" dinners. Indeed, Dr. Farrington was 
 able to hold his own with business men and look at the world 
 as they looked at it. He speculated mildly in the stock 
 market with the aid of Travers and usually with success. 
 
 Even Holden watched him with curiosity. The man's 
 name was on every one's lips these days. During the com- 
 paratively few years since his return from Vienna he had 
 made many powerful friends and had built up rapidly a repu- 
 tation as diagnostician and consultant. He was to-day, 
 without any doubt, the most marked of all the "rising men" 
 in the profession. If scientists like Graham called his ac- 
 quirements "book science," the public could not make the 
 distinction between that and laboratory science and would 
 not care if they could. Manner and personality, as Dr. 
 Farrington often said, had most to do with the success of 
 a modern physician in his profession. And Dr. Farrington's 
 personality was a very winning one. No patient of his was 
 ever made to feel that his troubles were due to his own self- 
 indulgence and follies. The doctor's therapy was soothing 
 and comforting, though costly. There was little of the 
 
THE HEALER 263 
 
 scientist in him, less of the seer, and nothing at all of the 
 Puritan. . . . 
 
 As the Farringtons drew away from their hostess, they 
 gave that instinctive, furtive glance over the human menu, 
 with which the experienced diner-out tests his luck. The 
 doctor nodded to Jenks, with whom he was on the best of 
 terms, shook hands with Travers, whom he had telephoned 
 that morning about the market before taking his train for 
 Washington, and bowed profoundly when he was presented 
 to the unknown little lady, Mrs. Holden, whom he imme- 
 diately divined he was expected to take in to dinner. 
 
 And Helen, when he tucked her arm softly beneath his and 
 bent toward her with his cordial smile, was instantly charmed 
 by the distinguished stranger, as women usually were. She 
 knew that he was exactly right, from his small pearl studs to 
 his crisp cravat, and perforce contrasted him rapidly with 
 the wrinkled figure of her husband across the table. Far- 
 rington's appearance showed what care and precision in the 
 smaller details of dress can do even with the convention- 
 alii3d garb of to-day. Any one anywhere could tell at a 
 glance that this man had always had the habit of good 
 clothes and good society, while the Wild One, in his ancient 
 dress clothes and his cravat rumpled untidily about his high 
 collar, betrayed at once the man unfamiliar with polite 
 society. 
 
 His wife had tried her best to get him properly prepared 
 for this dinner, which to her was a momentous occasion ; 
 but he refused to order new clothes, and had returned from 
 a day spent at a hospital so late that he had had merely 
 time to throw on the suit she had unpacked for him. It 
 
264 THE HEALER 
 
 was not a large matter, she knew, but she felt justifiably 
 aggrieved with her husband because he had not taken more 
 thought of his appearance among her friends, who might 
 be of such service to them both. Her mother, resuming 
 the vernacular of her youth, would have said, "You can't 
 make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," and the young wife 
 might have resented the remark. But it was something 
 very Uke this that passed through her mind as she watched 
 the Wild One glumly eating his way through his soup, while 
 Vera struggled to entangle him in the general talk. 
 
 "And that is your husband?" Dr. Farrington asked, 
 looking at Holden with keen scrutiny. "I am so glad to 
 meet him ! I have heard so much about you both from my 
 wife. You know Vera Travers is an old friend of ours. . . . 
 And I'm told that he is doing fine work !" 
 
 Doubtless he had heard from Jenks the tale of his opera- 
 tion upon the girl, who became his wife. But he phrased 
 his remark in such complimentary guise that the young wife 
 might feel that her husband was already of sufl&cient impor- 
 tance to be generally known. If Eric only would be gracious, 
 she thought, and make a good impression when he came into 
 personal talk with this charming and highly distinguished 
 man ! 
 
 "Tell me about your life up there in the woods. It sounds 
 fascinating. . . . It's the sort of place I have always 
 dreamed of, where one could do the things one really wanted 
 to do," he sighed sentimentally. 
 
 Thus he drew from Helen a description of the Healing 
 Spring, and the simple life they led there. 
 
 "Wonderful !" he exclaimed with a sigh at the end. "I 
 
THE HEALER 265 
 
 can see that your husband will make a great success of it. 
 ... I must get him to tell me about his cure. I want 
 to know of just such a place as that for certain cases I have." 
 
 There was nothing insincere in all this, for Farrington 
 was too good a doctor, too thrifty a man of the world, to 
 waste any opportunity he might have of gaining information 
 about "what was going on," a new "good thing," — whether 
 stock or drug or man. So he devoted himself agreeably 
 to the young wife of the obscure country doctor, whom he 
 found quite "nice" and "inteUigent," — described to her 
 a famous cure in the Bavarian Alps that resembled what 
 he supposed the Healing Spring might be, then told an amus- 
 ing anecdote of the household where he had just been. 
 "The women are all Christian Scientists, you know — I had 
 to fight my way to the poor chap's bedside." Then he passed 
 to the opera and flying machines, and when he gave his arm 
 to conduct his companion back to the drawing-room she was 
 very happy, and cast a beaming smile upon her husband 
 and Vera. 
 
 This was the atmosphere that shp had missed and uncon- 
 sciously been pining for these past months, — the atmosphere 
 of pleasant society, of the people "one ought to know," — 
 and she admired again Vera's skill in accompUshing so much 
 with her marriage venture, while she herself had done so 
 little thus far with hers. And Gerald Travers, who had sat 
 on her other side during dinner, was perfectly commonplace, 
 while her husband was not that, — no, not that ! 
 
 What passed among the men after the women went she 
 did not discover, because Holden was never communicative 
 about what bored him, and Vera was too kind to tell her 
 
266 THE HEALER 
 
 friend what she herself had learned from her husband. 
 But apparently Holden had not tried to make things 
 pleasant. He had met the first cordial advances of his dis- 
 tinguished colleague with a stony curtness that had dis- 
 couraged even Farrington's determined sweetness of dis- 
 position and sent him across the table to talk stocks with 
 Gerald Travers. Then he had fallen foul of the great Jenks 
 over the latest theory out of Germany of psychotherapy, — 
 the Socratic method of discovering the "hidden sorrows" 
 of nervous patients. The backwoods doctor showed such 
 acquaintance with the subject and such a power of vigorous 
 statement, piercing the psychologic webs of the subtle 
 German, that at last he had brought back Farrington to his 
 end of the table, and when their host, who had been sleepily 
 yawning over doctor talk, rose, the two city physicians in 
 spite of their dislike of the rough stranger recognized that 
 he was a man to be reckoned with. 
 
 "Your husband doesn't like me !" Farrington remarked 
 to Helen on his return to the drawing-room, "but I find him 
 most interesting — a strong man ! We shall hear from him 
 soon, I've no doubt. He ought to write for the joimials." 
 
 These agreeable compliments the wife straightway repeated 
 to her husband as they were driving back to their hotel. 
 
 "Ass ! " Holden remarked contemptuously. "I haven't 
 any theories, and that is why I can cure people instead of 
 naming their diseases." 
 
 "I thought Dr. Farrington very interesting," his wife 
 protested, " and so well bred. " 
 
 "Yes, he dresses nicely," Holden answered, closing his 
 eyes. 
 
THE HEALER 267 
 
 The wife believed that this was the moment when she 
 should assert herself, and correct some misconceptions of 
 her erratic husband. So, as the cab whirled them towards 
 the hotel, she read him a sensible little lecture upon the uses 
 and conveniences of good society, and described to him the 
 folly of a contemptuous attitude towards the organized forces 
 of ambition. 
 
 "They could do so much for you — all of them," she con- 
 cluded, "if you would only be nice to them !" 
 
 " Those people help me ? How ? " 
 
 " Oh, in so many ways ! Don't you see they have posi- 
 tion — influence ?" 
 
 "If I made them hke me, they would give me some of 
 their position?" he asked ironically. 
 
 "You are so difficult !" his wife complained. 
 
 A look of ironic amusement crossed his face, as he recalled 
 what old Jenks had said that evening at dinner, apropos of 
 certain remarks about socialism. "It was all idle talk," the 
 wise doctor observed, " because the women would have 
 none of it. " Women believed in an established order where 
 they took their places according to their men's rank. 
 
 By this time they had reached their room, and Helen was 
 examining her face and neck in the mirror with her back to 
 her husband. She was annoyed with him for the moment. 
 
 The room was littered with gowns and unopened bundles, 
 — spoils of the week's vigorous shopping. There was not 
 a chair nor a table on which some article was not deposited, 
 and the bed was heaped high with a miscellaneous assortment 
 of feminine adornment. Holden moved quietly about the 
 room, his hands in his pockets, restlessly examining the con- 
 
268 THE HEALER 
 
 fusion. He picked up a dinner gown, then a package of 
 baby clothes, a rich opera cloak that Helen had not been able 
 to resist, and finally settled upon a pair of white silk stock- 
 ings. He looked at these closely, a curious smile on his 
 expressive lips, and drew them through his fingers slowly, 
 reflectively. 
 
 "Eric," his wife remarked, her face still turned towards 
 the mirror, "you must order some evening clothes at once — 
 before the opera next week. That suit is positively ridicu- 
 lous!" 
 
 Something that she saw in the mirror caused het to turn 
 quickly and face her husband. He was still smiling, as he 
 stroked the silk stockings. 
 
 "I shall not need it," he said. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I take the morning train for the Lake." 
 
 "But — but — how about Mr. Elport ?" 
 
 He made a gesture with his hands that expressed finality. 
 
 " The boy is married to that woman — I found that out 
 to-day. And she is not a bad sort. I won't take any part 
 in separating them ! " 
 
 "Isn't it awful — it will break his father's heart !" Helen 
 exclaimed, her mind for the moment distracted from the 
 personal issue. "Can't anything be done ? It will ruin his 
 life!" 
 
 "I don't know about that. She's quite as much of a per- 
 son as he is, and he seems to care for her." 
 
 "But such a woman — with that past — " 
 
 "He married her because he was lonely — had been lonely 
 all his life. I guess his father will have to stand it." 
 
THE HEALER 269 
 
 He spoke slowly, and the little smile seemed graven on his 
 face. His wife knew that this smile was but the masque 
 of a complex and, to her, inexplicable mood. 
 
 " Do put down those stockings, Eric ! " she said impatiently, 
 "and tell me what you mean to do." 
 
 "Exactly what I said — go home to my work. I've asked 
 young Elport and his wife to go back with me." 
 
 He did not lay down the white silk stockings, and there- 
 after whenever the wife saw a pair of white silk stockings she 
 remembered this crisis in her married life. She felt that now, 
 if ever, she must make an effort, exert her will. If her hus- 
 band took this step, he would offend Horace Elport past 
 pardon. . . . 
 
 All this pleasant evening she had been forming happy little 
 plans for a prosperous turn to their fortunes. She had meant 
 that he should accept Elport's suggestion and assist him in 
 separating his weak son from the undesirable wife. Then, 
 on their return from Europe, they would of course estab- 
 lish themselves in the city, like Vera, like the Farring- 
 tons. It had all seemed possible and promising ! And now 
 with one brutal, irrational sweep of his will, this incompre- 
 hensible man had brushed her little castles from the table. 
 Why ? What happened at the dinner, before or afterwards, 
 that had caused such an411pgical determination ? She could 
 never know — might never understand the complexities of 
 this man's brain — and she must therefore be doomed always 
 to surprise and disappointment in her life. 
 
 "I can't possibly start to-morrow morning," she said 
 shortly, "and you know it !" 
 
 " Then you can stay here." 
 
270 THE HEALER 
 
 The words spoken calmly, equably, might mean little or 
 nothing, but she felt that they revealed a great gulf. She 
 had never quarrelled with her Wild One — rarely disputed his 
 will. She had been too easily influenced by him, she often 
 said to herself. She realized it now that she saw what 
 other women could do with their husbands. 
 
 He had declared his purpose not merely of spoiling her own 
 good time, but also of ruining her plans for their betterment 
 in the world. She felt outraged, aggrieved. Come what 
 might she would not yield at this crisis without battle. 
 
 "You know that I can't stay in this hotel after you leave !" 
 
 "You can go to your mother's then — you have wanted 
 to visit her for a long time." 
 
 "Why do you do such a silly thing — just to make me 
 unhappy ? " 
 
 "No — not that," he said, and in the glint of his deep eyes 
 she felt the antagonism of their two wills, — the fierce man's 
 will against her soft, obstinate woman's will. 
 
 As another part of the hidden complex in his mind came 
 to the surface, he remarked : — 
 
 "I'm going back to work, — to make some money to pay 
 for this ! " He pointed with a slow, inclusive sweep of his 
 hand to the scattered spoils in the room. 
 
 "You could make a lot of money if you did what Mr. 
 Elport asked you." 
 
 "Become a rich man's decoy? . . . When I sell myself," 
 he said sternly, " I make my own terms — do it my own 
 way." 
 
 Sell himself ! It sounded very dreadful to her, as if she 
 were forcing him to sacrifice his honor. Her little world 
 
THE HEALER 271 
 
 seemed swimming around her, and she clutched vainly for 
 support. 
 
 " Eric ! " she cried. " Don't you love me any more ? " 
 
 "What has that to do with it?" 
 
 He avoided her outstretched arms, and brushing some 
 parcels from a chair sat down. At that moment his heart 
 had no love for her of any sort, and she knew it. 
 
 "I can pay for these things myself," she said proudly, 
 " with my own money." 
 
 "Your mother's money," he corrected. 
 
 "Why do you always make such a fuss about money?" 
 she retorted disdainfully. 
 
 It seemed to her a sign of his inferior breeding that he should 
 reduce matters thus plainly to dollars and cents. She could 
 not realize that her father and her mother had done the same 
 thing all their lives with thrifty precision ; for she belonged 
 to the second generation of success and had been nurtured 
 in an aristocratic indifference to the terms of money. 
 
 "You spoil everything with your silly pride about using 
 my money," she said. "We might do so much — be so 
 happy, if you were only a little more like other people 1 " 
 
 "Like Gerald Travers and the Farringtons? . . . Did 
 we marry for that ? " 
 
 "I married for love !" she replied quickly. She was im- 
 mensely proud of her act of romantic courage, and cherished 
 still the sentimental ideal. She wanted him to feel somewhat 
 the sacrifices she had made for it. But he merely shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 "Try to keep it alive then!" he exclaimed, and turned 
 towards the door. 
 
272 THE HEALER 
 
 But she would not let him go. It did not end thus, not 
 for hours, not until the two in the silence of the early morning 
 had looked deep into their hearts and seen from fresh angles 
 the tangled problem of two human beings, who must some- 
 how harmonize their warring wills in this world of reality. 
 Again and again she said, with a rising note of desperation 
 in her voice, "It just means you don't care for me any longer. 
 I had better leave you at once — then you will be free to 
 do always as you wish. " Desperate threat that she had no 
 intention of fulfilling, used merely to reduce the stony mood 
 of the man to her emotional plane ! For love was the solvent 
 of all disagreements, she felt. She must pour out for her 
 intractable male the love philter, blind his pitiless eyes, 
 lull him. When a second and a third time she came back 
 to this point, — seemed unable to look beyond it, — he said 
 irritably, " Very well, let it be the end — if that is what 
 you want ! " and strode from the room. 
 
 She stood aghast, looking into the mirror with frightened 
 eyes. Had she broken the charm ? She felt utterly weak. 
 
 Thus it would be apparent to any clear-sighted observer 
 that the supreme human experience of personal romance 
 had come again near shipwreck in the case of these two. 
 Even the casual outsider, judging from surface indications, 
 as the women at Vera Travers's dinner that evening judged, 
 might pronounce, "They are not suited for each other — 
 that is all!" It is an easy judgment. Vera Travers herself, 
 who had seen the white flame of this passion at its purest, 
 might have her misgivings and say to herself, "They are 
 not fitted to dwell together, by training, habits, tempera- 
 
THE HEALER 273 
 
 ment." Yet the truth was that these two were no more 
 unfit for the task than most | highly charged men and 
 women. Possibly if Vera herself had imdertaken the ex- 
 periment of living with an imcompromising Idealist, she 
 would have succeeded better than her simpler friend. But 
 Vera would never have tried such an experiment. . . . 
 
 It seemed, in sum, that nature had been at her tricks 
 again. With her ironic indifference to personal results, she 
 had caught these two defenceless beings — man and girl 
 thrown together by fate under the highest stimulus of ro- 
 mantic circumstance, — just at seeding time ! And accord- 
 ing to her wont she had filled their eyes with the golden dust 
 of illusion, so that they could see nothing singly. In a short 
 two years the dust had been washed from their eyes, with 
 some tears for the woman, alas ! and they were now revealed 
 to each other in the hard light of spiritual nakedness. The 
 girl, that pure vessel of a divine flame exalted and wor- 
 shipped by the man in his need for worship, had proved 
 herself after becoming woman and mother to be just good 
 human flesh, moulded very much after the fashion of her 
 mother, whom she appeared wholly unlike. From that 
 mother she had inherited her instincts and her conventions 
 as to what her life should be. And the man, — ardent 
 lover and worshipper of the divine in her and himself, — the 
 Ideal, — has clearer eyes than hers. The inner force of 
 his nature must gain its end by the sacrifice of her whom 
 he has adored, or of something greater than himself within 
 his own soul. Little room for amiable compromises here ! 
 The soft arms about his neck are choking not him, but 
 something more than him. They are dragging him gently 
 
274 THE HEALER 
 
 into those well trodden ways of life that women understand 
 and instinctively select for their own preservation. He 
 must become a Farrington — or worse. 
 
 In days happily gone by for all civilized folk, the man 
 caught in such a dilemma would doubtless have beaten his 
 woman to a cruel submission and dependence, thereby 
 gaining a dubious triumph for his will at the expense of some- 
 thing crushed forever. Conceivably the woman in question 
 might have lived out her life more happily after such a 
 brutal conquest. But the world has slowly struggled forth 
 from the squaw era, and must perforce accord more and 
 ever more rights to these bearers of the sacred seed, how- 
 ever unfitted they may be at present for their liberty and 
 self-direction. Tradition has taught them for generations 
 to work by fraud and wile, and their instinct warns them 
 against the ideal. All prolonged contest with them will end 
 in the deterioration of the man. He must either cut the knot 
 or submit as gracefully as he can to their notion of civilization. 
 
 And so in truth must this Wild One determine at once what 
 he will do. If he has any great business in life, — if he is 
 in truth to be a healer, — he must tear himself, here and 
 now in this hotel room, from the arms that caress and bind, 
 and go about his work forthwith instead of attempting the 
 killing path of compromise. It would doubtless hurt the 
 woman cruelly, but in the end the total of human pain might 
 be less and much human disaster averted. 
 
 In such dilemma tradition and convention are absolutely 
 on the woman's side, and it is well they should be. For the 
 end that she blindly fights for, — civilization, society as it 
 is, success for herself in the world and her children, call it 
 
THE HEALER 275 
 
 what we will, — are things the common man is fitted to com- 
 prehend and admire. . . . Early that morning Helen came 
 to his room, her lovely hair curling loosely over her white 
 neck, and put her arms softly about him. 
 
 "I will go back with you," she murmured brokenly. "I 
 shan't care for anything here when you are gone. . . . 
 Eric, you must love me — a little !" 
 
 The man, seeing her tear-stained face, her gentle body 
 already showing slightly the curve of her second maternity, 
 took her in his arms and soothed her like a child, comforted 
 her and bade her stay on with her friends for a time. The 
 terrible thing was to hold her thus and feel in his heart 
 merely pity for her frail, childish being, pity for the creature 
 he had somehow caught in his will and crushed. No rush 
 of love, no fire of devotion ! 
 
 And she, simple as was her understanding, could perceive 
 dimly the fierce will of the man fighting to save his soul, 
 to slip the silken cords in which she would bind him. He 
 was fleeing to the north as the wild bird flies to the wilder- 
 ness, in order that he might live, fearing that if he should 
 yield to her desire and try to be like the Farringtons of the 
 city, he would become less than they — mere nothing. . . . 
 
 "No, I'll try to get ready and go back with you !" 
 
 "You don't really mean that — you had better stay and 
 have your fun out." 
 
 "Oh, if you want me to stay — " 
 
 He led her gently from the room. An hour later he got 
 aboard the North Star Express alone. It was very nearly 
 two years to a day since he had left the great city before with 
 the woman of his dreams by his side. 
 
VII 
 
 The second child came in due time — the child of passion. 
 It too was a girl, a dark little thing with broad forehead and 
 deeply serious eyes, "all the world like her father," as 
 the nurse said. And this time the mother was not distressed 
 because her child proved to be a girl. As she wrote Vera 
 Travers, who with Nina Farrington had made her a long 
 visit at the Lake that summer, "It is nice that they are 
 both girls, and so near together. They will be such com- 
 panions for each other and for me. I'll bring them both 
 out at the same time. "... 
 
 While she lay convalescing her busy mind went forward 
 happily into the years to that time when she saw herself 
 in her proper position in the world from which she came, 
 with her two daughters at her side. It never entered her 
 mind that these two small seedlings of herself might them- 
 selves rebel and choose another life from the one she designed 
 for them. There was but one good, as she thought, and that 
 was to do, so far as circumstances permitted, what her mother 
 had done before her, what her women friends were now doing. 
 Like the true woman she was, she disliked revolt, innovation. 
 "I want my girls to be hke other people," she wrote Vera, 
 "and have in life what other girls are having." Thus she 
 unconsciously belied the romance of which she herself had 
 been capable. . . . 
 
 276 
 
THE HEALER 277 
 
 The white-robed nun, who supplemented the services of 
 old Scotch Nan, came and went softly about her room, 
 shading her eyes from the too intense sunlight of the October 
 jnorning. Within the nun's starched coif, on her colorless 
 face, there was no sign of rebellion. She wore the badge 
 of a complete rehgious self-effacement. Sister Monica had 
 long since entered into her great silence. The young mother 
 pondered sometimes about sister Monica's solution of life, 
 and felt that it was unnatural. She wished her daughters 
 to be mothers hke herself, only with more stable positions 
 in the world. 
 
 Thus she lay luxuriously in her soft bed, cushioned with 
 the downiest pillows, wrapped in the fleeciest blankets 
 that Mrs. Goodnow's experience could provide — and mused 
 upon life. There was a boundless latent energy in her after 
 this second birth, as if all her woman's powers had been 
 thoroughly awakened at last. She schemed an entire man- 
 agement of her future life, unrolling it chapter by chap- 
 ter, filhng it with the lives of these two seedhngs whose 
 directing providence she had become. Already the focus 
 of her own being had shifted once, — from herself to her lover, 
 which was scarcely a shift after all, — but now it was shifting 
 a second time momentously — to her children. Hereafter 
 she would consider everything exclusively from their point 
 of view, and as far as she could she would bend her Uttle 
 world to their needs. That was her woman's instinct — and 
 duty, of course. 
 
 The lover had faded away with the dubious mists of her 
 morning : the husband remained as a social instrument of 
 her necessity. 
 
278 THE HEALER 
 
 When he had left her in the city that spring morning after 
 their stormy discussion, she had seriously contemplated never 
 returning to him, confessing her failure before her friends, 
 and trying to patch out her life alone the best she could, — 
 "devoted to her child or children." She had shown he- 
 depression as she lamely explained her husband's hasty 
 departure to her mother, and the shrewd old woman had 
 growled, "Crazy brute! Now you see, Nell, what it 
 means to marry a man beneath you !" But she had stoutly 
 defended him, ashamed to admit her mistake, shocked in- 
 deed by her mother's crude phrasing of it. With her old 
 friend Vera, however, she had coasted much nearer the fatal 
 shore of confession of her wifely dissatisfactions. She said 
 her husband was "erratic," did not pretend that there had 
 been any good reason for his sudden departure, and betrayed 
 plainly her wistful envy of her friend's superior happiness 
 with the stupid Gerald. But Vera — wise woman — would 
 not encourage this weak vein. Probably the doctor knew 
 best what was right for him, she told the yoimg wife, and if 
 later an opportunity should come that would bring him advan- 
 tageously into a larger world, he would accept it. She had 
 faith in the Wild One as a man. Anyway, women must do 
 the best they could with the male material marriage revealed 
 to them, and have patience — woman's surest weapon against 
 fate. 
 
 She had not been ready, in truth, to admit to herself, — 
 hurt as she was, — the final failure of her romantic ideal. 
 She wrote her husband almost daily of all her doings, and 
 as the weeks passed and the new child was growing large 
 within her the sense of her bond to her mate became stronger. 
 
THE HEALER 279 
 
 However far away he was, however harsh, he was the father 
 of the hfe within her, and womanhke she obeyed healthily 
 the secret call to that mate. For she was normally mono- 
 gamic, — married once and for all, she said to herself with 
 deep pride. So after Nora's wedding in early June she had 
 gone back to the northland in spite of all that her mother 
 could do to keep her daughter with her. Before Helen left 
 the city she secured promises from Vera and Nina Farrington 
 (with whom she had become rapidly intimate) to visit her 
 later in the summer without troublesome husbands. Her 
 intercourse with these two examples of successful wives had 
 been developing to her ideas. Especially had the blunt, 
 masterful Mrs. Farrington showed her that position which a 
 good wife should assume, — the directing force in the mar- 
 riage partnership. "I made Eliot do that," or "I'll make 
 Eliot do that," or "I should never think of my husband's 
 doing that !" — such phrases were ever on her lips. Another 
 of her remarks was also illuminating, "We couldn't do 
 such a thing, because of our position, you know, my dear." 
 And "a prominent man hke EUot has to think of appear- 
 ances." That was what Eric Holden had once described 
 as the game of social bluff, — a game the Farringtons, it 
 seemed, played most successfully. They "bluffed " the world 
 into taking them for more than they actually were worth, 
 in money, influence, reputation. And the world, which 
 likes to be bluffed boldly, accorded them in good measure 
 their assumptions ! Helen admired this force. 
 
 "Of course, my dear, you'll be coming to the city this 
 winter for a good visit," Mrs. Farrington said to her young 
 hostess as she left. 
 
280 THE HEALER 
 
 "If the doctor will let me !" she replied gayly. 
 
 "Bring him with you — it will do him good. You know 
 it doesn't do to live off by yourself in a place like this too 
 long. People forget you so quickly," the practical lady 
 warned. 
 
 "I know it!" Helen sighed. 
 
 "She's coming to me with both babies for a month any- 
 way," Vera said, kissing her friend good-by. 
 
 The two women had enjoyed their visit greatly, delighting 
 in the oddity of the Heahng Spring, where there happened to 
 be some agreeable semi-invalids at the time. They found 
 the Eyrie altogether charming — as a summer camp — 
 and congratulated their hostess on her comfortable estabUsh- 
 ment. "You have given it a touch, my dear I" Mrs. Far- 
 rington said. The first time she saw the stone house on the 
 cliff she had exclaimed, "What a quaint little hut! And 
 did you really live in it the first year?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "I should think you would find it pleasanter to be removed 
 from the patients. Sick people get on your nerves if you 
 have them about all the time. I never go near the hos- 
 pital. ... A man must find his home a relief from his 
 job." 
 
 Vera merely smiled. . . . 
 
 One thing Helen had determined upon after her visit to 
 the city, and that was to make herself thoroughly comfortable. 
 She had brought back with her a man cook and his Alsatian 
 wife, who could serve as her personal maid. "If you are 
 going to spend your life in the wilderness, you might as 
 
THE HEALER 281 
 
 well make yourself comfortable," Mrs. Goodnow had said. 
 Vera had found her the ideal woman for nursery governess. 
 "Really, you know, a lady, refined and cultivated, with the 
 languages; and you can't begin too young with children to 
 give them the languages." 
 
 Holden, who at this period of his career made his patients, 
 rich and poor alike, work hard with their own hands and do 
 for themselves as much as possible, — for the moral as well 
 as the physical benefits of hard labor, — was moved to 
 comment somewhat ironically upon the luxurious footing 
 of his own household. But Helen, fortified now by fresh 
 examples, met him with the positive assertion that they could 
 not live "decently" in the woods with less service. "Rather 
 a far cry from the days of the smoky coffee-pot and the log 
 fire, with old Gray Jack's fried trout and soda biscuit!" 
 Dr. Percy jeered. Nevertheless he and the other men in 
 the neighborhood frequented the house and praised the cook- 
 ing, and the wines which came from the well-known house 
 in the city that Mrs. Goodnow had always patronized. 
 Helen, whose standards were now fixed, was proud of her 
 establishment. "Of course, my dear," she would say to all 
 objections, "if we really are as poor as all that !" Then the 
 doctor fled to his den at the Spring, vanquished. That is 
 the feminine thrust that the Ideahst can least well withstand. 
 It pierces him at a weak spot. 
 
 After all the tempestuous feelings of the crisis in the hotel 
 bedroom, the wife could not see that matters had changed 
 materially between herself and her husband. She found 
 him hard at work over his patients on her return from the 
 city, and Dr. Percy reported uninterrupted prosperity at the 
 
52 THE HEALER 
 
 Spring, increasing repute, more applications than ever. 
 Latteriy the doctor had immersed himself in the new ideas 
 prevalent in the medical world upon psychotherapy. It 
 seemed that his cases were becoming more and more of the 
 nervous order, exclusively, as the Spring drew its votaries 
 from the large cities, from the higher classes of society. And 
 to meet their needs the doctor was led to experiment after 
 his own manner with the different methods in vogue in 
 this restless age, when men, having abandoned their purely 
 religious faith, are seeking a basis of faith in the physical life 
 about them, trying to create strong bodies, to make money 
 by the aid of the spirit, — seeking ever the talisman, the 
 magic that will raise them. 
 
 All this appealed to the healer in him. His work, as he 
 had once told his wife, was chiefly with the will, the source 
 of all human power. To arouse the will, to stimulate it, 
 to train it, perfect it, increase its force, — that was the subtle 
 task that he set himself with each patient. First he must 
 detect what inhibited the will or paralyzed it or distorted its 
 function, thus destroying life, and then patiently, by physi- 
 cal means and psychic means, discover what in each case 
 would remove the obstruction, and restore the patient to his 
 normal state of will, and add to his inherent power. 
 
 His handling of Elport's weak wastrel of a son was typical. 
 He induced the boy to bring his wife into the woods, much 
 to the father's disgust and anger. Then he studied the pair, 
 taking them with him on an expedition into a new part of 
 the wilderness, camping with them, and finally leaving them 
 for a time to rough it by themselves. He soon learned more 
 about the son than the father had ever known. Nothing of 
 
THE HEALER 283 
 
 all the golden fruits of civilization that had been offered to 
 the boy had been suited to his nature. It was a case of com- 
 plete indigestion with resultant excesses that had ended in 
 the dubious marriage. If anything was to become of him, 
 he must start afresh almost from the beginning, with the 
 companion he had weakly blundered upon. 
 
 All this Elport came reluctantly to perceive when finally 
 he accepted the doctor's urgent invitation to the Lake. 
 
 "Buy them that ranch the boy wants," Holden counselled. 
 "Send them there and let them work it out together. 
 Harry has never had a chance — nor has she !" 
 
 "But you know — " Elport protested. 
 
 "Yes, I know all there is to know about her. . . . She 
 may prove the weaker — I doubt it. If she leaves him, if 
 she takes him back where he was, why then you will be right 
 and I wrong. Then you can buy him a divorce. But I 
 think she will stick, and help him make the new life — try 
 it!" 
 
 With misgivings Elport followed the advice, no other 
 immediate solution offering itself. At least there would be 
 no scandal this way. A year later when he met the doc- 
 tor's wife in the city he said to her, "Tell your husband 
 I think he was right. He worked a real miracle that time ! 
 He saved my boy. ... I have just come back from the 
 ranch. Harry is becoming a man, at last." 
 
 At this time, moved by gratitude for what the doctor had 
 done for him, Elport opened an account in Holden's name, 
 investing in it " what any other doctor would have made 
 me pay !" as he explained to the wife. "It may be useful to 
 him some day — I hope so. He's the kind of man who 
 
284 THE HEALER 
 
 will die in a garret, if we don't look out for him." Helen 
 was much pleased, and she felt more comfortable about 
 the bills she had incurred lately. Elport was a man of the 
 world : he recognized the proper values of things. She was 
 glad that they had such a capable friend, and that he had 
 not been hopelessly estranged by her husband's erratic 
 course. 
 
 She was at a loss to know why, having made such a success 
 with young Elport, he should refuse another patient, who 
 arrived at the Lake with a letter from Dr. Farrington and 
 begged Holden to take him in. Farrington described this 
 Payson as a member of a prominent family, a dehghtful 
 man socially, with brilliant prospects, who unfortunately 
 had become addicted to morphia. The doctor would not 
 let him spend the night at the Spring, but packed him back 
 across the Lake after a brief interview. Helen, who had 
 caught sight of the handsome and elegant stranger, was much 
 annoyed, and she feared that the Farringtons would be dis- 
 pleased by such a summary treatment of their prot6g6. 
 
 "I want Farrington to understand that I am not running 
 a dope cure," the doctor explained to her bluntly. "The 
 man is putty — I can do nothing for that kind." Yet he 
 accepted a poor teacher from a small southern college, who 
 had somehow heard of the doctor and found his way to him, 
 partially demented, with settled melancholia. He perceived 
 beneath this poor fellow's unattractive exterior the sort of 
 material that he could mould. His pride, it seemed, was to 
 give himself to "those who are worth while," — men and 
 women who had the character and the ability to help them- 
 selves acquire sanity and health. If circumstances were 
 
THE HEALER 285 
 
 forcing him to keep a sanitarium, it should be a retreat for 
 the elect. 
 
 "It's what I call spiritual snobbery," Dr. Percy remarked 
 ruefully, discussing this new manifestation of the doctor's 
 eccentricity with his wife. "He throws out Payson, and takes 
 in the professor — discrimination in souls." 
 
 It seemed to the young wife a foolish refinement. Payson 
 was very rich and able to pay well for what he got. If they 
 were to be in the business, they might as well make it pay. 
 Of late she was becoming interested in the money side of 
 life, for she had her children to think of . . . . 
 
 That winter the doctor's wife made a long visit in the city, 
 leaving her husband in his snowy isolation. Early in the 
 spring he came down to fetch her and the children home, 
 and this time he tarried in the city for several weeks, visiting 
 the hospitals, seeing doctors, consulting old patients and 
 examining new ones. "He's getting more human," Vera 
 Travers pronounced. "Why, he's almost social ! . . . 
 He'll be a fashionable doctor yet, Nell — I suppose that's 
 what you want him to be ? " 
 
 There was malice in the question, but the wife replied 
 promptly, "I'd like him to be like Dr. Farrington." 
 
 " No ! " Vera mused. " He'll never be that." 
 
 The crisis, which had seemed so momentous to the young 
 wife a year ago, was now happily passed, and her little bark 
 was swimming safely towards the placid waters of middle 
 life. She had a growing confidence that she could steer it, 
 with her larger experience, through any future rapids. She 
 returned to her northern home with content for another 
 
286 THE HEALER 
 
 summer. It was no longer the frontier, even to the city eye, 
 that it had once been. The lumber camps had altogether 
 disappeared, having stripped the forests from the hills, leav- 
 ing here and there patches of first growth to witness their 
 devastation. Several large summer camps had been started 
 on the shores of the Lake, and there was a social life of a 
 sort. CiviUzation had at last laid its taming hand upon the 
 wilds. There was telephone and telegraph as well as railroad. 
 Even Mrs. Goodnow might have been satisfied. 
 
VIII 
 
 It matters little where it may start, the modern hospice 
 for the sick — the Sanitarium — must descend, as the young 
 scientist had said to Holden, and become in the end the 
 medical house of prostitution. It may have risen in the 
 genius of a great doctor, it may have sprung from purest 
 ideals of service, truth, honesty — as did the Heahng Spring. 
 But it must inevitably pass, it would seem, by gradations 
 more or less rapid to a common trade. It carries in itself the 
 seed of moral decay, because it involves the base bargain 
 of money for life. It is the house of sale where the divine 
 gift is bartered for the thirty pieces of silver. 
 
 However that may be, the gross truth was hidden for the 
 present from the eyes of all that sought the Healing Spring. 
 These were the palmy days of its growing reputation, its 
 greatest apparent efficiency, if not its greatest money success. 
 That fame which the fat little doctor had so confidently pre- 
 dicted had found the Healer out. He was doing " something 
 different," something apparently obscure and magical. He 
 gave few drugs or none at all : he broke the conventions of 
 medicine, and in an age that was weary of the pretensions and 
 failure of science he seemed to offer a mysterious solution for 
 the ailments of humanity. Patients flocked to the hotels at 
 the Settlement and were ferried across the Lake to Holden's 
 Camp, as the place became known, in search of the doctor, 
 
 287 
 
288 THE HEALER 
 
 who received them or rejected them arbitrarily according to 
 his will, — according to whim, some said. Of those he took 
 imder his charge he exacted complete obedience, — abdica- 
 tion of the will it was said ; he set them mean tasks, neglected 
 them or abused them, but he rarely sent them back as they 
 had been. Some reported that his charges were outrageous, 
 and others that they could not get a bill. Some said they 
 went for the benefit of the waters — "good for chronic 
 rheumatism, neuritis, sciatica, diabetes, etc," — the ills of a 
 sedentary and overfed people. Others never saw the famous 
 Heahng Spring. 
 
 The doctor's reputation grew with the fame of the Spring. 
 He was reported generally to be a queer, odd fish, a brute, 
 a savage, but surely a genius. In all the impalpable ways in 
 which fame spreads about the round globe, his name travelled 
 on the Ups of those he had cured, even of those who had 
 come to him and failed to be received. The diverse currents 
 of human gossip vibrated with report of this wild Healer 
 of the north with his strange hospital camp beside the beau- 
 tiful Lake. Legends of him arose, and of the wonders he 
 worked. At last the wave of notoriety broke at his door 
 when a metropolitan newspaper sent an investigating jour- 
 nalist to the Spring. 
 
 "I told you so !" Dr. Percy, who had entertained this 
 news' scavenger, generously proclaimed. "You can't hide any 
 good thing under a bushel, or in the woods. In the Sahara, 
 at the North Pole, the doctor would be found out — sooner 
 or later. All he has to do is to set up his tent in the wilder- 
 ness — doesn't have to hang out a sign!" 
 
 The austerity of the life that he imposed — the famous 
 
THE HEALER 289 
 
 disciplines — helped to attract the weak and the ailing. 
 Some called him brutal. But even the self-indulgent, coming 
 from the hands of obsequious practitioners, liked the scourge, 
 felt the tonic of bare truth-telling. There was perhaps the 
 subtle pleasure of martyrdom — especially for women, and 
 more and more women had become patients at the Spring. 
 
 There came a very great lady, who after much entreaty, 
 intrigue, and recommendation had been admitted to the 
 camp. She reported to her friends that she was given a 
 bough bed on the dirt floor of a cabin and told to wash her 
 own clothes in the lake. 
 
 "Fancy! And before all the others, too! A washer- 
 woman — what is the sense of that?" 
 
 This one was ignominiously expelled because she stayed 
 abed and bribed old Gray Jack to fetch her breakfast. 
 
 It would seem that a habit of tyranny was growing upon 
 the man as he became successful, a desire to rule. He 
 could be tender with the weak and forlorn, — pitiful, gentle, 
 imderstanding. These still called him the Healer and pro- 
 fessed belief in the power of his touch, his mere presence as 
 he visited their rooms on his rounds. "He can read your 
 heart through the flesh and bones," they said. "His look 
 bums into you and reveals." 
 
 Extravagances and redimdances of admirers, out of which 
 spring legends even to-day ! Did the man himself hear 
 them? Did they affect him, give him over-confidence, fill 
 him with pride ? If he were austere with his patients, he was 
 surely austere with himself. He labored day and night, and 
 no longer fled to the woods as formerly, but spent all his 
 days with his patients. 
 
290 THE HEALER 
 
 That humble scientist, Graham, dweller in the laboratory, 
 coming northwards on a vacation, tarried a day at the Lake 
 to see his friend's famous establishment. Holden took him 
 about the Heahng Spring. It was now a pleasant, busy 
 camp, with a number of little wooden houses beneath the 
 trees, with bath-house and hospital and mess room for the 
 nurses, a good operating room, and all the appliances of 
 modem medicine. 
 
 "Quite a plant you have here," the city man remarked as 
 he left. "It must pay!" 
 
 Holden nodded impatiently. He knew what the other 
 meant; he was reading the signs of the medical house of 
 prostitution. Some said that it paid enormously, others that 
 the doctor was a poor man. But Helen, whose growing needs 
 demanded a good bank account, knew what it was. Of course 
 it paid ! 
 
IX 
 
 Helen, who with her many long visits to the city to see 
 her mother and friends had adjusted herself quite happily to 
 the life that fate had marked out for her, began to have a 
 new preoccupation. What was to become of the Uttle girls ? 
 They must be educated. Not merely learn what the ex- 
 cellent Mme. Verne could give them, but be given the larger 
 opportunities of life. 
 
 "The girls cannot be brought up here much longer," she 
 said positively to her husband. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " It's not a suitable life for girls," she said impatiently. 
 
 "They have plenty to eat and wear and fresh air and ex- 
 ercise — what more do they need ? " 
 
 "They must be educated." 
 
 "Well, there is a good school over in Blakely," the father 
 §aid indifferently. 
 
 " School at Blakely ! . . . Please be serious, Eric ! . . . 
 How about companions? Wild animals?" 
 
 "There are children at Blakely — we have some at the 
 Spring too — " 
 
 "InvaUds!" 
 
 "We'll bring all you want frongithe city — there are plenty 
 would be glad to come." 
 
 "Anybody's children \" 
 
 The scorn and disgust of the tone, the flash of the eye, the 
 
 291 
 
292 THE HEALER 
 
 stretch of the arm, as if drawing the two little ones to her, 
 indicated the aristocratic faith. How could the grand- 
 daughters of the president of the Produce Bank be brought 
 to maturity properly in this backwoods environment with 
 any chance companions ? 
 
 "Please be serious, Eric !" . . . 
 
 Husband and wife had come away together, alone, to 
 climb the slope of Macatawa. It had been an idea of hers, — 
 a sentimental one long cherished, — to sleep out in the woods 
 with her husband again, as they had often done in the early 
 days of their marriage. She meant to camp at the very spot 
 near Elk Lake where she had first taken her lover in her arms 
 in the red, red dawn. Such melancholy revivals of sentiment 
 please woman's heart ! 
 
 On one excuse or another the doctor had put off the ex- 
 pedition until the end of the summer, and at last had yielded 
 to her insistence with no great enthusiasm. The summer 
 season — always busy now, for the sick then ventured freely 
 into the country — had been a very trying one for the doctor. 
 For the first time he had consented to visit patients outside 
 his own camp, at the hotels in the Settlement, and this daily 
 journey across the Lake had taxed his strength. He had 
 been obliged to trust more and more to his assistants, Dr. 
 Percy and another young fellow whom he had taken from the 
 medical school. That meant, in brief, that he was spreading 
 himself thinly over a larger surface of effort, was applying 
 himself to each problem with less undivided interest and 
 energy. He knew it. And he also was aware dimly that 
 beneath all pretext he was doing it for money. As he gave 
 less of himself to his sick, he perforce had given more medi- 
 
THE HEALER 293 
 
 cine, — had fallen back on what once be would have called 
 the chicanery of the profession, diet, massage, drugs, — all 
 the devices that produce quick spectacular results, that keep 
 the confidence of the sick in the physician. 
 
 So he was silent, thoughtful, — glum, his wife thought, as 
 he often was latterly. 
 
 The summer had been a trying one to her also. After a 
 very hot spring there had come a long drought when the 
 woods seemed to shrivel and burn and the air to lose all its 
 usual fragrant vigor. Then there had been an unpleasant 
 social disaster at the Spring. One of the patients, — a quite 
 fashionable woman, whom she had in the first instance in- 
 duced her husband to consider favorably, — had wounded 
 her pride. Mrs. Laforge had treated her with condescension, 
 patronized her, and the doctor's wife, accustomed to play the 
 lady bountiful, the gracious hostess among the invalids, 
 to pick her associates and make much of her invitations 
 to the Eyrie, had engaged in struggle with the assuming 
 stranger and been worsted. Mrs. Laforge, who had captured 
 the most attractive of the pretty little bungalows and estab- 
 lished herself quite cosily with her own maid, had formed 
 her circle among the more able-bodied patients, and had 
 detached insensibly the most interesting men from the Eyrie, 
 — in a word had offered battle to the mistress of the Lake 
 and routed her shamefully, thanks to her larger social expe- 
 rience, and the prestige of her well-known position in the city. 
 At first Helen had affected to ignore her disaffection, but when 
 the nurses and the doctors began to carry gossip, she appealed 
 to her husband. He had been irritable, as he was frequently 
 these days, due to overwork as well as to inner struggles that 
 
294 THE HEALER 
 
 she knew nothing of, and had declared that he would get rid 
 of all the women patients. In the end she had made him see 
 that Mrs. Laforge must leave, and he had discharged her, 
 to the great scandal of the little community. He had sternly 
 quelled the gossip by declaring that he would not accept an- 
 other woman as patient at the Spring. It was a threat that 
 could not be carried out, of course. Altogether the harmony, 
 the high atmosphere of peace that was supposed to rest upon 
 the Heahng Spring, had been thoroughly disturbed. . . . 
 
 They toiled on through the slashings and waste timber of 
 the lower slopes. The day was hot and sultry, and the thick 
 haze of smoke which had been hanging about for weeks ob- 
 scured the view of the Lake that they should have. The 
 smoke seemed thicker to-day than ever and more sharply 
 pungent the farther they penetrated the woods. The fires, 
 set by careless campers earlier in the season, had been 
 spreading for weeks to the north and west, many miles away, 
 and must be coming nearer to the mountain. They were 
 obliged to rest frequently in order to breathe more easily, 
 and this conversation had taken place in one of the pauses, 
 while they sat in the dry run of what had once been a trout 
 brook. Helen, who had grown appreciably stouter of late, 
 felt the effort of the ascent. 
 
 " Please be serious, Eric ! " she repeated, raising herself 
 upon an elbow and turning her face towards her husband. 
 " I almost never see you these days alone, and we must talk 
 such things over like husband and wife." 
 
 She had in mind another, bolder scheme that she wished 
 to broach, and had contrived this expedition not merely for 
 sentimental reasons. 
 
THE HEALER 295 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, as though to say, " It always 
 comes out the same — you do what you like with the girls." 
 
 "We'll make good little squaws of the kiddies," the doctor 
 remarked idly, as if he refused to concern himself deeply in 
 the education of two children of four and five years. "Put 
 'em in moccasins and skins and let 'em run the woods with old 
 Jack. They'll be worth while when they're grown women." 
 
 " If you think I shall let the girls waste their lives here — " 
 she began carelessly. 
 
 "Has it been so bad for you?" he demanded quickly. 
 
 "We must do better for the girls," she replied evasively. 
 " Every one wants the best for their children ! " 
 
 "The best !" he exclaimed in a low tone of irony and doubt. 
 
 "Yes, the best," she repeated positively. "Do all one can 
 for them, of course, and fortunately we have the means and 
 the friends to give them their little place in the world." 
 
 He rose and turned up the mountain. She followed, de- 
 veloping this theme on which she seemed to have thought 
 much. 
 
 They reached the broad shoulder of the moimtain, from 
 which there was usually to be had a clear view to the north 
 for unnumbered miles, but the smoky twilight had begim 
 to settle down before they could find the little lake they 
 sought. They peered into the murk that was being driven 
 down the wide valley by a strong wind. Every now and 
 then a dull red flame burst through the grajoiess of the at- 
 mosphere. 
 
 "The fire has eaten its way over the divide," Holden said. 
 "The wind is stronger. If it should veer a point or two, it 
 
296 THE HEALER 
 
 will sweep down through the notch to the Lake. . . . We 
 had better not go farther," he added, as another of the dim 
 beacon fires of the north burst forth. 
 
 " You don't think there is any real danger, Eric ? " Helen 
 asked anxiously, thinking of the Eyrie and the children. 
 
 "It depends on the wind," he repUed. "This stuff we 
 have been coming through would biu-n hke chaff. If the fire 
 once got through the notch, it would sweep the Settlement and 
 all about the Lake !" 
 
 She trembled at the thought. 
 
 "It might be better so," Holden muttered to himself. 
 " Sweep it all away! " 
 
 "Let us go back at once," she said, turning. 
 
 "We couldn't find our way five rods, in this dark ! We 
 must wait imtil dawn before trying it." 
 
 So they camped for the night where they stood beside a 
 damp bog hole from which they contrived to scoop a cup of 
 muddy water. Helen rolled herself in her blanket and soon 
 fell asleep from weariness after the exhausting climb. The 
 last she saw of her husband was a blanketed figm-e crouching 
 against a dead log, looking far away into the valley where 
 the points of dull red light glowed through the dark. 
 
 "Come to bed," she murmured sleepily, thinking of 
 some old memory that could not be quite revived, — a 
 picture she had of her husband watching like that while she 
 slept. . . . 
 
 When she opened her eyes rain was falling on her face 
 steadily, and in the gray gloom she could see her husband, 
 wrapped in his blanket, standing above her. 
 
 "Eric !" she murmured, for the moment forgetting where 
 
THE HEALER 297 
 
 she was, believing that they were once more young lovers in 
 the wilderness. "Eric, I'm so sleepy !" 
 
 "It is time to be off," he said hurriedly. "The rain has 
 saved us ! " 
 
 She threw off her blanket and struggled drowsily to her 
 feet. Below, much nearer than the night before, could be 
 seen the red poiats of smouldering fires. The sweep of the 
 scourging fire had been stayed, just in time. There was no 
 wind, and the fine raia fell persistently. 
 
 Holden made the pack and flimg it on his shoulders, and 
 they set forth down the mountain in the rain. It was a 
 dreary end to the little excursion that she had so carefully 
 planned. 
 
 "Some day," Holden remarked grimly, "the fire will get 
 in here and burn the country to the rock ! It was only a 
 matter of a few hours this time." 
 
 "There are always forest fires," she answered easily. 
 
 "But never so close before !" 
 
 As she followed his long stride through the dead brush, 
 she was thinking that she had not yet broached her scheme. 
 She was tired of her life at the Lake. This summer had 
 especially been irksome to her, with the Laforge affair and 
 the long weeks of heat and drought and smoke. And she 
 had been disappointed in an expected visit from Vera Travers, 
 who had gone abroad with her husband. For the last few 
 years she had made it a custom to spend a part of each 
 winter in the city, at her mother's and with her friends. 
 But this autumn she planned to go abroad with her mother 
 for the whole season. She thought her husband might follow 
 her in the early spring and bring her back, — that was what 
 
298 THE HEALER 
 
 BO many American husbands had the habit of doing. Nina 
 Farrington was to be in Europe this winter as well as the 
 Traverses and others whom she knew. 
 
 "Eric," she suggested, as they got well out of the woods. 
 "Let us not go home for breakfast. Let's go back to the 
 stone house ! We have everything with us, and it will be 
 so cosey to cook our breakfast up there as we used to." 
 
 He made no remark, and when they reached the Cove she 
 took the path across the sands and up the steep cliff. It was 
 still early and the invalids in the cabins under the trees were 
 not yet awake. A night nurse was leaving the little diet 
 kitchen with the weary step of a long vigil. Otherwise the 
 Uttle group of cabins and bungalows slept peacefully in their 
 bright flower beds. The rain had stopped, and as husband 
 and wife mounted the steep path to their old home the sun 
 struggled up out of its watery bed and shed a few red beams 
 upon the dripping trees and the dark walls of the pretty 
 cottages. 
 
 "It looks very nice," Helen remarked contentedly, think- 
 ing of the wild thicket that had once been there, of the tents 
 scattered among the trees, and of the "ragged regiment" 
 that had occupied them. Surely the Healing Spring had 
 made wonderful progress latterly, and it was bringing in a 
 great deal of money to its proprietor. That was one of the 
 remarks that Mrs. Laforge was reported to have made, — 
 "The Spring had been touched by a woman — and now 
 flowed pure gold ! " . . . 
 
 The path to the broad door of the stone house was covered 
 with weeds and long dusty wreaths of shrivelled vines hung 
 down from the eaves, completely blotting out the windows. 
 
THE HEALER 299 
 
 Nobody had occupied the little house since the waitress had 
 given birth to her feeble child there years before. For a time 
 Helen had consciously avoided going near the place, and 
 latterly she had siniply forgotten all about it. A new and 
 easier path had been made from the Eyrie to the Spring so 
 that it was no longer necessary to make the detour by the 
 cliff. 
 
 While the doctor tried the various keys that he happened 
 to have in his pocket, Helen brushed aside the vines and 
 peered into the window. The large room was very orderly 
 and empty and still and dark. Its familiar furniture, and the 
 great fireplace with the deerskin lounge before it, gave her 
 a strange sensation of looking in upon an old, abandoned self 
 that she had quite overgrown. It was Uke the face of her 
 extreme youth, recognizable yet somehow disappointingly 
 strange. She hurried on into the little weedy garden where 
 she had spent so many dreaming hours, and raising herself 
 on her tiptoes looked through the window into her chamber. 
 This was in disorder ; the cover of the bough bed had been 
 eaten by mice, revealing the dead brown branches beneath ; 
 and in one comer was a yellowish garment that had belonged 
 to the waitress's child. She turned away, grieved. Her 
 husband was still working at the rusty lock. 
 
 "I shall have to go down to my office to get the key," he 
 said. " None of these will fit the lock. Will you wait ? " 
 
 " No matter ! " she replied quickly, recognizing in his tone 
 an unwilUngness to take this additional trouble, herself sud- 
 denly out of tune with her romantic project of returning to 
 the old home for the day. "We'd better go on to the Eyrie 
 at once and get our breakfast. I want a bath !" 
 
300 THE HEALER 
 
 So they turned into the path behind the house and pro- 
 ceeded silently homewards. Each was heavily conscious 
 of their defeat, — the impossibility of reviving the glowing 
 past, of returning to that little stone house with its shrivelled 
 vines. She had thought of spending the day and perhaps 
 the night there, playing once more the lover and his mistress, 
 her heart quick with all the memories of what had been be- 
 tween them there within those gray walls ! But it might not 
 be. The time had passed for such sentimental triflmg for 
 them. Life with its healthy, practical habit had captured 
 them both. Yet she sighed. 
 
 As soon as they reached the Eyrie she ran to her room, 
 luxuriated in her bath tub, put on a fresh gown, took a look 
 at the two children, and came down to their late breakfast 
 much refreshed. The dining room at the Eyrie had been 
 enlarged by building out a glassed-in room overlooking the 
 Lake. From it one could see the bold front of the new San- 
 guishine House across the blue waters of the Lake and also 
 the lofty headland that separated the Eyrie from the Cove. 
 
 Holden was lounging before the fire, having had his coffee, 
 smoking a cigar and reading his mail, which Gray Jack 
 brought up to the Eyrie at this hour. The letter bag was 
 heavy this morning as always, with letters from prospective 
 patients, from doctors recommending cases, from old patients. 
 Holden glanced over them and let them fall one by one to the 
 floor. He was a wretched correspondent. Dr. Percy must 
 always pick up the opened letters and see that they were 
 duly answered. 
 
 This was the occasion, the wife thought, to broach her 
 project, and she forthwith proposed her scheme. 
 
THE HEALER 301 
 
 "You must get away early this winter," she said in conclu- 
 sion, "and join us somewhere — Italy or Germany. ... It 
 will be so good for the children." 
 
 As he said nothing, she insisted: — 
 
 "Don't you think so?" 
 
 "No, I don't think so." 
 
 "Eric!" 
 
 "But you have your heart set on going and that is enough 
 — why make an excuse of the children?" 
 
 He rose with a frosty smile, scattering his letters, and took 
 his watch out. Formerly he had made his first round of visits 
 before brealdast, but these days he rarely got started by 
 ten o'clock. 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " If you don't want me to go, of course — " 
 
 "I haven't said so, have I?" 
 
 "I thought you would join us in a few months, and we 
 could all have such a beautiful time ! " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "You will, won't you?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 At this point they were interrupted by Dr. Percy, who 
 usually came to the Eyrie shortly after breakfast to arrange 
 the day's programme, discuss the cases, and collect the mail. 
 Dr. Percy was the System of the establishment, the efficient 
 fly wheel without which it would have doubtless flown into 
 a thousand pieces. This morning he brought a message from 
 one of the nurses. 
 
 "You must see that Miss Dupont," he said. "She's 
 making a lot of trouble." 
 
302 THE HEALER 
 
 Holden shrugged his shoulders wearily. The women were 
 always more troublesome than the men. . . . The day's 
 routine had begun, the endless chain of annoying small vexa- 
 tions that make up the routine of the nervous specialist. 
 
 "I gave her a hypodermic this morning," Dr. Percy said. 
 
 Holden nodded. There was a time when the use of the 
 little needle at the Heahng Spring would have caused a revo- 
 lution, especially if used by any one but Holden. 
 
 " I'll go over there first," he said at last. 
 
 As he slowly left the room, dragging his heavy body 
 slightly, the younger doctor looked at him anxiously. He 
 had the devotion of a boy to his chief, slaved for him, wor- 
 shipped him, truly thought him a great man, — the most 
 wonderful doctor he had ever known. He had done his own 
 loyal part in the success of the estabhshment that had been 
 built up, but he gave all the credit to the chief. 
 
 "What's the matter, Percy?" the young wife asked, 
 sipping her coffee and glancing over a note. "Have some 
 coffee?" 
 
 "Not to-day. ... Do you think the doctor's quite him- 
 self?" 
 
 "The doctor? . . . Just tired. He's been up half the 
 night — we had such a bad time ! " and she recounted their 
 journey. 
 
 "Perhaps that's it — but I think he needs a thorough 
 rest, a change. No man can stand the sort of thing he does 
 year in and year out." 
 
 "That's what I tell him, but you know he won't leave his 
 old Spring. But I have a plan," she added brightly, and she 
 developed at great length the trip to Europe. "You must 
 
THE HEALER 303 
 
 come up here and look after him while I am gone, won't 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes, of course," he replied quickly. "But I wish you 
 could take him with you." 
 
 "Oh, he'll come over when he gets tired," she said easily. 
 "Just shoo the patients off, drown 'em — you can run the 
 place, Percy !" 
 
 (Between them it was always "the place," and "the busi- 
 ness.") 
 
 They chatted gayly, but when the young doctor rose to go, 
 the cloud returned to his face. 
 
 "I wish he'd go now," he said again. 
 
 " You know well enough he won't, Percy, so what's the use 
 of worrying ? " 
 
 " Well, I'll do my best ! When do you leave ? " 
 
 "Two weeks from Monday." 
 
 "Passage engaged?" 
 
 Helen nodded. Her little plan had been carefully thought 
 out, as always. 
 
 The young doctor waited, glancing over the mail, and 
 finally went off, leaving the impression that there was some- 
 thing on his mind unsaid. It was difficult to tell a wife what 
 he had in mind, — to hint that the doctor, his admired 
 chief, was not always quite himself, that there might be a 
 definite cause for his pallor, his moodiness, and his periods 
 of lassitude, — a dangerous cause that doctors are always 
 exposed to, as an ever ready temptation in their moments of 
 fatigue and depression. 
 
 But the little doctor loyally kept his suspicions to himself. 
 
PART FOUR 
 
One hot August morning a rough wood boat rowed by 
 two old men made in to the pier at the Cove and landed 
 a passenger — a woman dressed wholly in black, who held a 
 small bag in her hand. 
 
 "You'll find him up there," one of the men said, motioning 
 to the nearest building. 
 
 The woman looked doubtfully at the bungalow gleaming 
 in the sun, with a colored awning stretched over its broad 
 veranda, then glanced back at the dazzling sand of the beach 
 and the gleaming lake, as if doubtful whether she had been 
 brought to the right place. 
 
 "Yes — up there!" the half-breed grunted, nodding his 
 head encouragingly, and he and his fellow began to pull the 
 boat away from the pier. The woman, thus left to her own 
 initiative, dragged herself a little wearily over the hot sand 
 towards the bungalow, examining it meanwhile doubtfully. 
 She was thin and weak and seemed burdened with the small 
 handbag that she carried. Sinking down on the lowest step 
 of the long flight that mounted to the veranda she waited, 
 and then as no one appeared she rose again and dragged her- 
 self slowly up the steps, clinging to the railing. As she 
 reached the top a young man dressed in white flaimels with 
 an aster in his buttonhole came out of the door whistling and 
 started to rim down the steps. At sight of the stranger 
 
 307 
 
308 THE HEALER 
 
 he stopped and raising his white flannel cap asked her 
 politely: — 
 
 "Are you looking for some one?" and as the woman did 
 not reply immediately he added: — "Can I do anything for 
 you?" 
 
 The woman looked at him closely out of her sunken eyes, 
 then murmured: — 
 
 " I want to see the doctor." 
 
 "Which one?" the young man demanded with a slight 
 smile. " I am a doctor ! " 
 
 " The doctor," the woman repeated, stressing sHghtly the 
 article, as if in her mind there could be but one, and as the 
 other frowned impatiently she added, "the Healer!" 
 
 At the word the young man smiled broadly. 
 
 " You mean Dr. Holden ? He isn't here at present, — 
 hasn't come over to the Spring from his house this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " I will wait for him." 
 
 The yoimg doctor started impatiently to descend the 
 steps, then turned. 
 
 "Dr. Holden rarely gets over before noon. Can't I do 
 anything for you ? . . . He doesn't usually see new patients 
 — he is very busy, you know !" 
 
 The woman made no reply, but sank upon the veranda 
 and brushed a hand across her eyes. 
 
 "Have you an appointment with him?" 
 
 The stranger shook her head. 
 
 "Then you had better let me talk to you. . . . Won't 
 you come into my office ? " 
 
 This time she said slowly, positively, 
 
THE HEALER 309 
 
 "I will wait for him." 
 
 "At least take one of those chairs under the awning," the 
 young man recommended impatiently, "and get out of this 
 broiling sun ! " 
 
 But the woman paid no heed, as if she had not heard his 
 injunction, and closing her eyes rested her head against the 
 railing. The young doctor shrugged his shoulders and 
 hurried away. The woman sat there for some time, now and 
 then opening her eyes and gazing listlessly out over the Lake. 
 As people came and went along the trim paths, casting curi- 
 ous glances at the black figure, she rose and looked unsteadily 
 over the httle buildings and gardens where the nurses in 
 starched white dresses passed back and forth on their er- 
 rands. All was quiet, reposeful in the narrow glade, yet full 
 of early morning activity. An old man with a shock of 
 white hair moved about the grounds, gardening in a desultory 
 way. On the porches of the bungalows and small cabins 
 could be seen a few figures lying in wheeled chairs. 
 
 Everything glistened in the August sun. 
 
 Presently the woman descended the steps and walked 
 slowly across the grove in the direction that the young doctor 
 had motioned when he spoke of Dr. Holden's house. Her 
 wandering gaze caught sight of the small stone house on the 
 top of the cliff, and as if determining in her mind that this 
 was where she would find the doctor she took the rough path 
 that led thither and toiled up the steep side of the cliff, paus- 
 ing every few steps to shade her eyes and look upward at the 
 house. Thus slowly, painfully she dragged herself to the 
 summit and sank down exhausted before the closed door of 
 the little stone house. There she remained resting her head 
 
310 THE HEALER 
 
 against the door, closing her eyes to shut out the shimmering 
 heat waves above the trees, unmindful of time. 
 
 She sat there, — a black spot huddled against the weathered 
 door that was framed in green vines, — a face not young, not 
 old, colorless, bloodless, with sunken eyes and curving mobile 
 lips that were relaxed in a slight smile of anticipation. The 
 bumblebees hummed in the overgrown garden beyond the 
 house, and a dusky humming bird whirred about the blos- 
 soms of the drooping vine at the door. Its tiny presence, 
 like the flicker of sunlight through the leaves, seemed to rouse 
 the stranger from her revery, and she looked more curiously 
 at the spot, — the tangle of the old garden, the stone house 
 covered completely with creepers, the cob-webbed small 
 windows, — then yielding once more to the drowsy, deserted 
 atmosphere of the place she closed her weary eyes and a 
 smile of quiet content and peace began to wreathe her thin 
 lips. . . . 
 
 A man's slow step could be heard in the woods, and pres- 
 ently his broad shoulders brushed aside the bending stems 
 of larkspur and hollyhock. At sight of the black figure, 
 crouching against the door, he stopped abruptly. The 
 woman opened her eyes and said simply: — 
 
 "You are the doctor !" 
 
 "What do you want?" Holden demanded harshly, "and 
 why are you here? . . . No one is allowed — " he began 
 and checked himself. His pale face flushed with irritation. 
 The woman, examining steadily the heavy, bent figure of 
 the man, noting the unhealthy pallor of the large face with 
 its deep black eyes, said quietly: — 
 
 " I have come a long way to find you. " 
 
THE HEALER 311 
 
 "Did you write? ... I don't remember," he replied 
 imeasily, brushing his hand slowly across his forehead, as if 
 he were making an effort to recall something that might have 
 slipped his mind. 
 
 " No, I did not write ! You would not have known me. 
 ... I came." 
 
 The doctor moved irresolutely, muttering: — 
 
 "We do not take patients who come unrecommended." 
 
 "But I have come a long way to find you," the woman 
 repeated confidently. 
 
 "I said," Holden began, then in another key ended almost 
 querulously, — "You should have sent me word at least !" 
 
 "Then you might have turned me away." 
 
 "Where are you staying — at the hotel ?" 
 
 She shook her head, as if to say that hotels, even the hum- 
 blest, were not for her. 
 
 "I walked from the railroad to the landing at the end of 
 the Lake and from there some men brought me in a boat." 
 
 The doctor frowned and moved as if he would continue on 
 his path and leave her there, but after making a step he 
 turned and demanded: — 
 
 "What is the trouble?" 
 
 "I am sick — worn out," she said slowly, "and I must 
 live ! " She prolonged the last word with a sigh, as if her 
 human tale of woe began and ended there. 
 
 " Yes, they all say that ! " the doctor rephed with slight 
 scorn. "But what is your special trouble — and why must 
 you get well?" 
 
 The woman quivered as if he had dealt her a blow. She 
 rose trembling from the step and leaned against the door, 
 
312 THE HEALER 
 
 closing her eyes against the blinding sun, as if she would 
 shut out his cold face. 
 
 "Perhaps I was wrong !" she murmured low. 
 
 "Come!" the doctor said more gently. "At least you 
 must get out of the sun or you will have a stroke." 
 
 He motioned her to follow him and led the way to the little 
 garden at the end of the stone house. The firs growing 
 thickly to the edge of the tiny beds completely screened the 
 place and made a heavy shade. The woman sat down upon 
 the stone bench, and the doctor, leaning against the flat 
 boulder that had once served as a garden table, stood ques- 
 tioningly. 
 
 " I have other people beside myself to care for," the woman 
 began wearily. " That is the reason why I must live ! " 
 
 "Married?" 
 
 She shook her head with a slight smile of self mockery. 
 
 "My mother, my sisters — I meant," she explained. 
 
 And then she told her story, — the story of the woman's 
 struggle in the city, an old story with small variations in it. 
 One of a large family with an invalid father and an incom- 
 petent mother, she had been forced to set her hand to labor 
 before she was mature. In the shop, then the factory, 
 where for ten long hours each day she had stood among the 
 whirring belts, with the monotonous din of incessant toil, 
 until her mind seemed to reel, she had spent six years. But 
 she was intelligent enough to know that this drugging toil 
 was veritable dissipation of her slight store of energy, and 
 she had dragged herself out of the swamp of factory labor by 
 incredible effort, educating herself nights and Sundays for 
 employment that was less killing. First in petty businesses, 
 
THE HEALER 313 
 
 among coarse men, and finally in a quiet orderly office where 
 intelligence was paid something like its proper wage she 
 had forced her painful way, in order that she might earn 
 money, and more money, for the helpless mother and the 
 sisters, who should not be forced to repeat her struggle. 
 
 In the dark factory, in the hidden inner rooms of giant 
 city buildings, she had spent all the days of her youth, with 
 the grinding noise of labor in her ears. 
 
 "Never sunlight, never peace!" she whispered, looking 
 at the dimpling lake beneath the little garden with a strange 
 smile of attainment. 
 
 "I see," the doctor commented sententiously. "Years 
 of overwork ; poor, ill-cooked food ; no rest, no sunlight, no 
 play — the body gave out ! What did you expect ? " 
 
 "Yes," she acknowledged simply. "It gave out before 
 its time." 
 
 "There are many like that !" 
 
 "Thousands and thousands of women." 
 
 "Well, — you went to see a doctor, I suppose, and he told 
 you that you were killing yourself ? " 
 
 " Yes — he told me to rest, and he gave me some medicine, 
 a tonic. I could not rest — the medicine did me no good. 
 I went to another doctor and he gave me another medicine. 
 It did me good for a few days, and then I went to another 
 doctor — I was very weak. He sent me to a hospital, and 
 the doctors there made an operation. It did no good. I 
 went back to my family ; I wanted to die, but I could not — 
 there was so much to be done ! The time had not come," 
 she said softly. "So when I was strong enough to stand up 
 and walk, I came here." 
 
314 THE HEALER 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " There was a woman in the bed next mine in the hospital 
 who told me of your Healing Spring. She had been in the 
 north here, and she said that you had saved her Ufe — that 
 was years ago. . . . She said, 'He is the only doctor 
 who can cure the sick — he is a Healer ! ' " 
 
 She glanced up at Holden with a look of triumphant assur- 
 ance and her lips curved happily so that her face became 
 younger, less faded and toil worn. The doctor moved 
 impatiently. 
 
 "So on the word of this stranger in the hospital you have 
 come a thousand miles to find a man you know nothiag 
 about ? That was not very sensible." 
 
 The woman smiled again. 
 
 "How did you know I could do anything for you?" 
 
 "Because I needed you so much !" 
 
 The doctor paced back and forth in thought. 
 
 "She told me the name of the Lake — Sanguishine. I 
 looked it up on the map, — Sanguishine ! " She rolled the 
 name softly, lovingly. 
 
 "How did you know that I should be here ? It was some 
 years ago, you said, that this woman was under my care." 
 
 " I needed you so," she repeated. . . . " The place is not 
 what she said it was — different — " She broke off as though 
 she were about to say that the Healer himself was not the 
 one that had been described to her. 
 
 "How different?" 
 
 "Oh, it's more like other places in the country, they de- 
 scribe in books, with pretty houses and walks and flower beds, 
 and people all about." 
 
THE HEALER 315 
 
 "What did you expect?" 
 
 "I don't know — it would be large and silent and wild — 
 it was in the wilderness, she said." 
 
 "That was long ago — there's no wilderness hereabouts 
 now ! " 
 
 "Ah, that is the reason. . . . But you are here still !" 
 
 "How do you know that I am the same — that I can do 
 for you what I did for that woman ?" 
 
 She looked at him with troubled eyes, and her glance fell 
 as she murmured, "Ah, thai I do not know !" 
 
 The doctor frowned and turned half away. 
 
 "My place is quite full just now — I have all the patients 
 I can attend to, and more. . . . Besides," he continued 
 brusquely, "it costs money to stay here — a great deal of 
 money ! Have you thought about that ? " 
 
 "The woman said that you would take nothing for all you 
 did for her." 
 
 He waved his hand as if to say that also was long ago. 
 
 "I would work and pay you afterwards, little by httle," 
 she said timidly. 
 
 "I don't know where to put you," he muttered to himself 
 rather than to her. 
 
 "She said — that woman — that the sick lived in tents 
 and log cabins, which they made for themselves when 
 they were able to — they lay near the earth under the 
 stars. ... I could stay here in the shelter of the trees — 
 anywhere ! " 
 
 And as he waved this aside, she said pleadingly, "Take 
 me ! Let me come ! . . . Don't turn me back. I must 
 get well!" 
 
316 THE HEALER 
 
 He turned away impatiently, as if he had already spent 
 too much time with her. 
 
 "This place is empty," she said, looking at the vine-cov- 
 ered window above her head. "Let me stay here !" 
 
 The doctor started. 
 
 "I cannot drag myself back in despair all those long miles 
 — I'd rather — " She looked over the edge of the rock down 
 into the blue water beneath, as if she would fling herself 
 from the cliff and find rest beneath the smiling surface of 
 the Lake. 
 
 "The house is empty," the doctor murmured more to 
 himself than to her. "It has been long empty." 
 
 She said nothing, divining that in some way the place 
 roused peculiar memories in the man. 
 
 "It is only by chance that you found me here this morn- 
 ing," he continued dully. "I do not often come this way." 
 
 "It is very lovely here," she said softly; "so far away from 
 all the world." 
 
 "Come !" he commanded. 
 
 He strode rapidly to the weathered door of the little house 
 and shoved it violently with one knee against the planking. 
 It yielded slowly, the lock gave way, and at last the door 
 swung in. 
 
 "I've lost the key long since," he explained. 
 
 She followed him into the large dim room of the stone 
 cottage. The gray ashes on the hearth were covered with 
 dust and soot. The place had a musty, shut-up odor, but 
 all was in order, — the big table, the deep settle, the snow- 
 shoes tied in bundles to the rafters. The doctor stood in 
 the centre of the room and stared about him for some 
 
THE HEALER 317 
 
 moments, preoccupied with his own thoughts, unmindful of 
 the stranger. 
 
 "Empty, empty !" he murmured to himself. 
 
 The woman softly crossed to the long window and raised 
 a sash, admitting the warm, fragrant summer air into the 
 still room. 
 
 "We will let life into it," she said softly, "and then it 
 will become home." 
 
 The doctor started as if her random words had acutely 
 touched his inner thought. She smiled back at him from 
 the window, and as she stood there by the casement, parting 
 the thick vines so that air and sunlight could enter, she seemed 
 already a different creature from the forlorn, black-clothed 
 woman that he had found crouching before the door an hour 
 ago. She was taller than he thought, with a certain grace 
 in her supple form, and the trembling smile upon her thin 
 lips seemed to light her face with the look of youth she had 
 so long lost. She was a woman whom some one might once 
 have loved. The sad spirit of an unfulfilled womanhood 
 lay in her wistful eyes. 
 
 "Yes!" the doctor exclaimed, opening the opposite 
 window, "the house has been shut up too long — it should 
 have been used before ! . . . I see there is a leak beside the 
 chimney — I will have it mended. . . . You'll do well 
 enough here for the present. I will send some one to 
 you." 
 
 Abruptly he stepped out before the woman could reply, 
 and the stranger followed him to the open door where she 
 stood upon the threshold as if mistress of the house, and 
 watched him disappear along the path to the Spring. Then 
 
318 THE HEALER 
 
 she entered her new home and sat down on the broad settle 
 with its worn deer hide, and stared into the cavernous, empty 
 fireplace. 
 
 "Life," she murmured, with still smiling lips. "It needs 
 life — we all need fife ! " 
 
 And her eyes closed wearily. 
 
II 
 
 The new patient watched the nurse, who was dusting and 
 putting to rights the small bedroom. 
 
 "Will the doctor see me to-day?" 
 
 " I don't know, miss ! " 
 
 "It's a week to-day since I came — and he has been here 
 only once," she said in a low voice to herself. 
 
 "Don't worry about that !" the nurse took her up sharply. 
 "There are some who stay a month before they even get 
 sight of the doctor — and some he never sees at all. . . . 
 If you want anything, I'll call Dr. Farrold." 
 
 "She said he nursed the sick with his own hands — and 
 his touch seemed to do them good," the patient murmured 
 to herself. 
 
 "Who? Dr. Holden? Not much !" the nurse exclaimed 
 with a laugh. "I tell you he don't seem to know half the 
 time if a patient is here. He prescribes and leaves the 
 details to the young doctors — they carry out the cure, you 
 know." 
 
 "How can they?" 
 
 The nurse smiled to herself, and as she was ready to leave 
 asked again: — 
 
 "Shall I speak to Dr. Farrold?" 
 
 "No — I will wait until he comes !" 
 
 "That's right. You're doing well I Just don't -worry! 
 
 319 
 
320 THE HEALER 
 
 It takes time — months and months — when a patient is 
 all rim down like you were," the nurse said authoritatively. 
 
 " But I can't stay here months and months ! " 
 
 "They all talk like that at first. But some of 'em stay 
 here a year and more and then don't want to go away — 
 they get used to it !" 
 
 The patient closed her eyes and turned away. Another 
 time she asked : — 
 
 "You haven't given me the water." 
 
 " Oh, the Spring water — it wasn't prescribed for you." 
 
 "But I thought the water from the Healing Spring — " 
 
 The nurse laughed sceptically. 
 
 "You've heard that old story? It's just good plain sul- 
 phur water — and it's nasty enough I can tell you to do 
 some good !" 
 
 " Won't you bring me some ? " 
 
 "Oh, you'll go down to the baths some day. . . . Now 
 you must take your medicine." 
 
 The patient took the glass from the nurse's hand and looked 
 dubiously at the colored contents. 
 
 "I thought he never gave medicines, but you have brought 
 me a new one every day and sometimes two or three !" 
 
 "Not give medicine — a doctor? They all give medicine, 
 some more, some less — it just depends." She closed her 
 lips against further indiscretion and urged, "Drink it — it 
 will make you feel stronger." 
 
 The patient shook her head doubtfully, but drank off the 
 dose and held out the empty glass. 
 
 "There!" 
 
 "That's right," said' the nurse cheerily. "Now don't 
 
THE HEALER 321 
 
 you worry yourself about medicines or doctors or nothing. 
 You'll get along fine — just wait and see. . . . Does that 
 window make a draught?" 
 
 " Don't shut it ! I like to lie and look out upon the green 
 mountain across the gulf of blue sky. The mountain seems 
 far away from here, as if it might be in the wilderness !" 
 
 The nurse screwed up her brows and glanced at Macatawa. 
 
 " It's a good ways off, sure ! . . . It's wild enough here 
 when winter comes, I can tell you !" 
 
 "But it's no longer the heart of the wilderness." 
 
 "I'm going now, miss. . . . Try to sleep all you can. 
 It's nice and airy up here, and you can't be disturbed by 
 anything. They haven't used this cabin since I was at the 
 Spring. You're in great luck to have it." 
 
 "It is nice," the patient murmured. "Still as the wilder- 
 ness, the heart of the wilderness ! " she murmured as if she 
 loved the words. 
 
 "Oh, bother the wilderness !" the nurse exclaimed laugh- 
 ingly. "Go to sleep." Then she closed the door, saying 
 to herself, "That must be her trouble — the wilderness 
 — it's on her brain. Poor thing ! She looks quite worn 
 out." 
 
 After the nurse had gone the patient did not sleep, but lay 
 drowsily watching the fleecy clouds float over the gulf of 
 blue outside her window. They made fantastic pictures 
 of light and shade upon the swelling breast of hills and circled 
 the summit of old Macatawa. Along the ridge where the 
 fire had burned and been stayed, the stark trunks of dead 
 trees stood gaunt against the horizon. They pointed their 
 
322 THE HEALER 
 
 bare heads to the sky in memory of the scourge that bad 
 reached them and stopped there. 
 
 The woman lay with a light and quiescent body. The 
 medicines or the long silent days of rest seemed to have erased 
 from her wasted body pain and fatigue. She had no strength, 
 she could not move nor feel. But she was at rest. She was 
 thinking of the woman who had once occupied this little 
 stone house. There must have been a woman, who to her 
 woman's eye had left the print of her hand upon her dwelling. 
 This was a woman's room where she lay. Who was she? 
 what had she been like ? why was she here no more ? And 
 the doctor — the Healer she had dreamed of and sought 
 with so much effort — what had happened to him ? That 
 glorious Healer she had come so many weary miles to find ! 
 
 The door opened, and as if her thought had summoned 
 him to her the doctor stood in the doorway, smiling slightly. 
 She tried to rise, but fell back upon her pillow, murmuring, 
 "At last!" 
 
 The doctor threw the cigar he had been smoking out of the 
 open window and came up to the bedside. His heavy figure 
 lurched slightly, as if he had not complete control of his 
 muscles, and his eyes shone with a curious brilliance out of 
 the pallid face. He breathed heavily, as if he were restrain- 
 ing himself under some sort of excitement. 
 
 The sick woman, watching him keenly, shrank away. 
 
 "How are you to-day, Miss — Miss !" 
 
 "Smith — Eva Smith," the woman said. 
 
 "Well, Miss Smith, you're getting on nicely up here by 
 >50urself, aren't you?" He spoke nervously, unlike the slow 
 utterance that he had used the first time they had met. 
 
THE HEALER 323 
 
 " I suppose so. . . . I like to lie here and watch the clouds 
 sail over the Lake and those great hills. . . . But I am very- 
 weak." 
 
 "That's all right," he said hastily, "you look comfortable !" 
 
 Thrusting his hands idly into his pockets he stared out of 
 the open window at the sunny prospect of the hills. A 
 distinct change came over his face, reflecting the swift course 
 of thoughts in his mind. 
 
 " They used to be all covered with trees — primeval forest 
 — clear to the top of the mountain," he muttered. "And 
 all the valley between it and here was filled with the uncut 
 forest." 
 
 "That was the wilderness I" she exclaimed softly. 
 
 "Yes, wilderness — all the way to the North Pole ! Just 
 the empty wild — free for animals and men." 
 
 "What happened to it?" 
 
 "Oh, first the lumber companies, and then tourists and 
 settlers, and then the fires — the usual thing." 
 
 "Forest fires?" 
 
 " They burned to the divide you can see over yonder and 
 stopped there by those big bare trunks on the ridge." And 
 after a pause he muttered to himself, "It came near burn- 
 ing up the whole region — it might have been better if it 
 had!" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Oh," he said vaguely, "it would have made a clean 
 sweep — all about the Lake. Then there would have been 
 a new beginning, — perhaps." 
 
 "All that soft fresh green in the valley is lovely," she 
 said. 
 
324 THE HEALER 
 
 " The new growth covers up the scars of the axe pretty 
 rapidly," he admitted. "But it will never again be the old 
 north wilderness." 
 
 " There will be green farms instead." 
 
 "I suppose so — settlers are pouring in all the time." 
 
 "And they make new homes for people to live in." 
 
 "Out of the free wilderness." 
 
 "Something better than the wilderness — homes for men 
 and women and their children to live in. Homes for human 
 lives!" 
 
 The doctor shrugged his shoulders with a scowl and turned 
 his face squarely upon the woman. He looked at her frail 
 body relaxed upon the bed and said meaningly : — 
 
 "And that seems to you better • — what they call life ?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, color flushing her white face, making the 
 great affirmation in spite of her defeat in the struggle and her 
 bodily weakness. " Yes, — human life, the chance to be, 
 the chance of happiness." 
 
 The smile faded from the doctor's lips, and his face became 
 sombre, harsh. He said brusquely: — 
 
 "The chance to be ! Do you think that is so important 
 after all ? Has it brought you so much ?" 
 
 " It has brought me little — almost nothing. But I can 
 dream what it might be — in a place like this, in some new 
 land of hope!" she murmured, flushing again over her 
 wasted face as she confessed her woman's defeat. 
 
 The doctor turned away impatiently and walked up and 
 down the cell-hke chamber, his eyes upon the ground. At 
 last he stopped before the row of medicine bottles ranged on 
 the little shelf beside the window and looked them over. 
 
THE HEALER 325 
 
 " You are taking the right things," he said, scowling at the 
 labels. "Enough of 'em, too !" 
 
 "Medicines will not make me stronger," she observed 
 quietly. 
 
 He wheeled upon his feet and exclaimed with a scowl: — 
 
 " You don't know anything about it ! What do you come 
 to a doctor for if not to get his medicines?" 
 
 "The others gave me medicine." 
 
 "Well," he said with an easy laugh. "My medicines are 
 different, Miss Eva Smith ! They will cure you !" 
 
 He turned to leave the room. But the sick woman drawing 
 herself up to a sitting position with effort, leaned forward, 
 and said in a low, intense tone : — 
 
 "That woman at the hospital said that you cured without 
 drugs !" 
 
 The doctor stopped abruptly. 
 
 "Nonsense !" 
 
 "Yes," she insisted. "You were the Healer then !" 
 
 "In those days, you see, it was the wilderness here and 
 very difficult to get supplies. We had few drugs of course, 
 and did our best. We had to depend on ourselves pretty 
 largely," he explained volubly, as if defending himself from 
 an accusation. 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " For everything ! We had few tools — why, I built this 
 house myself with a crowbar and a hammer ! . . . But now 
 we have science to help us, — we can keep in touch with what 
 is being done all over the world, — the latest things, you 
 know!" 
 
 A smile of lurking irony played over his lips as he spoke. 
 
326 THE HEALER 
 
 "We try everything," he added. 
 
 "And it helps — science ?" 
 
 "Of course it helps ! Would you throw away the knowl- 
 edge of two thousand years and all that men are doing to- 
 day, and depend on one man?" 
 
 "If he were a Healer," she murmured softly. 
 
 The doctor frowned impatiently. 
 
 "So take your medicines with confidence — we still make 
 cures, Miss Smith!" And then he added harshly, — "or 
 make them think so ! It's the same thing — we get results ! " 
 
 "The medicines give — results?" she asked with uncon- 
 scious irony. 
 
 "Oh, yes — plenty of results!" he laughed. . . . "Now 
 take your medicines and leave the rest to me. Good-by, 
 Miss Smith!" and the doctor was gone. The sick woman 
 could hear the door of the little house close heavily behind 
 him. 
 
 She lay for a long time quite still, looking out of the open 
 window upon the beautiful landscape, but she no longer 
 smiled. At last her lips moved unconsciously, and she 
 murmured: "My Healer, oh, my Healer! Where has he 
 gone?" 
 
Ill 
 
 He came again a few days later, just at nightfall. The 
 sick woman was lying on the couch before the open window. 
 The doctor came up to her without greeting and with a pre- 
 occupied professional air took her thin arm in his long fingers 
 and holding it lightly counted the feeble pulse beats. Then 
 he knelt by her side and listened to the beats of her heart. 
 As he rose from his knees he said dully : — 
 
 "No stronger, eh?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "I must change your medicine !" He took a memoran- 
 dum pad from his pocket, and began to make notes. 
 
 "That will do no good." 
 
 He merely glanced at her and continued to write. 
 
 "Not any medicine, nor rest and quiet !" 
 
 He closed his book with a snap and exclaimed : — 
 
 "What do you want?" 
 
 "First, tell me the truth — the whole truth." 
 
 "About your case? ... It is not an uncommon one. 
 Your organism is exhausted — nerve cells empty. The fibre 
 and the flesh are burned out — you can see for yourself what 
 the trouble is. You have spent all your energy with both 
 hands. . . . Now you must take time — a long time — to 
 get a new store of vitality." 
 
 "Can I ever get it?" 
 
 327 
 
328 THE HEALER 
 
 She looked at him searchingly, and he answered shiftily: — 
 
 "Nobody can tell you that ! . . . Nature usually rights 
 herself if you give her the chance — and haven't tampered 
 too far with her laws, — " He mumbled rapidly the pro- 
 fessional platitudes that meant nothing specific. "All you 
 can do is to give your body a chance. Stay here and rest 
 quietly, and see what Nature will do for you 1" 
 
 She looked at him defiantly. 
 
 "That is very well for your rich patients down there," — 
 she pointed to the Cove below, — "but you know that I 
 cannot lie here and rest — I have my work to do. I must 
 live!" 
 
 An angry flush spread over his pallid face. 
 
 "You are unreasonable ! You have spent all your capital, 
 and now you want a miracle to renew it over night." 
 
 "Yes," she said insistently; "I want a miracle — my 
 miracle ! " 
 
 "Miracles don't happen these days !" 
 
 He laughed disagreeably. 
 
 "Thatonesaid, — " 
 
 " I cannot work miracles, — any longer," he interrupted 
 mockingly, "in spite of the tales you have heard about my 
 Healing Spring. I am doing for you all that science can do 
 to-day to get you well. You must be content with that 
 and have patience." More professional soothing syrup ! 
 "I am doing for you what I do for the others down there, 
 and they are satisfied. They get well — sometimes." 
 
 "I want more !" she said with a rare smile; "I want my 
 miracle." 
 
 "I cannot do the impossible !" 
 
THE HEALER 329 
 
 "You could once." 
 
 He got up impatiently from the edge of the couch where 
 he had been sitting. 
 
 "Don't go!" 
 
 "Why should you expect the miracle ?" 
 
 "Because of my great need." 
 
 "We all need our miracle — or think we do !" 
 
 There was an empty silence between them. 
 
 " You tell me I must accept this. There is no help for 
 me except what Nature may hold out — no help in all the 
 world 1" 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "Tell me the truth — all the truth !" 
 
 "Very good! You shall have it. There is nothing for 
 you. You were doomed by God before you were born to 
 this fate. I cannot patch you — no doctor could. Your 
 little flame has been sucked out before its time by cruel 
 labor in unhealthy conditions. There is no one who could 
 give you back what you have spent the last dozen years !" 
 
 In the dusk his pallid face seemed to have something sinister 
 in it. The woman looked at him in growing horror, speech- 
 less. She dragged herself upright by her hands, pushing back 
 the hair that had fallen about her drawn face. 
 
 "I will not believe it !" she whispered. 
 
 "I tell you this because you demand the truth, — the whole 
 truth as I know it. . . . The medicine I am giving you will 
 quicken your machine for a little while, give you a semblance 
 of health. If you had money, — enough money to free you 
 from all hard work forever, — you might live on, drag out 
 a life as a semi-invalid, like so many rich women." 
 
330 THE HEALER 
 
 "Why this for me?" 
 
 "Because, as I have told you over and over, you have 
 starved yourself body and soul, woman — yes, body and 
 soul, I say ! From the beginning you have squeezed all the 
 force out of your body." 
 
 "I had to," she moaned. 
 
 "You have given it neither food nor joy — joy, that is 
 what you need most ! You are starved, starved — and it is 
 too late to get food." 
 
 "I had to." 
 
 In a gentler tone the doctor demanded : — 
 
 "Why didn't you marry?" 
 
 "Marry!" 
 
 "You might have?" 
 
 "Yes," she said simply. "I might have married — if I 
 would leave others to starve !" 
 
 "It was a costly sacrifice for you," he replied coldly. 
 
 "He was just a boy," she said musingly, "like myself — 
 working for a few dollars a week. We could not have done 
 more than barely live with all our effort — and there were the 
 others, my mother and sisters." 
 
 "But afterwards, later — " 
 
 She bent her head. 
 
 "Was there no other chance ? Couldn't you love another 
 man ? " he probed pitilessly. 
 
 "Yes," she said, raising her face and looking frankly at 
 him, "I loved a man ! I might have had him !" 
 
 "Then why— " 
 
 "He was a married man — separated from his wife ! " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
THE HEALER 331 
 
 " It seemed to me then that I could not do that. It seemed 
 to me wicked. I went away so that I might not do it. It 
 was hard — it took all the will I had to leave him, — to 
 leave my happiness. But I did it ! " 
 
 "That was hard," he said dully. 
 
 "I am not sure that I did right," she went on in a clear 
 voice. "If I were there again where I was, with his love and 
 my happiness, I should do — differently." 
 
 He nodded comprehendingly. 
 
 "It would have given me life, — I should not be here at 
 the end!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Yes, I should take it," she said quietly. "One must live 
 and do one's work — that is the great thing in life." 
 
 "A woman like you must have love — and bear children," 
 he said. "Or pay the forfeit, as you are paying. But it 
 takes courage to defy the world — much courage for a 
 woman." 
 
 "It takes courage, and I hadn't it, because I was not sure. 
 But the time will come when single women like me who work 
 as men work will have the courage to love and bear children 
 if they need to — and men will respect them ! " 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 Like two who had come to know each other thoroughly, 
 they were silent in the twilight. Outside the room a bird 
 twittered in the garden, sang its little song, and then was 
 silent, also. 
 
 "Well," the doctor muttered, "yours is a mistake that 
 civilization has made as well as you. Now we must do the 
 best we can with the mistake." 
 
332 THE HEALER 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "I wish that I could do more to help you, but I cannot." 
 
 "I will not believe that !" she cried in sudden revolt. "I 
 will not believe that life has ended for me — that all happiness 
 is closed against me, all doing. . . . Once," she leaned for- 
 ward accusingly, "you would not have told me so — would 
 not have come to me with drugs to hide the truth ! You 
 would not have thought it ! Once you would have done the 
 miracle for me !" 
 
 "When one is young, one believes many things — one 
 tries many things," he said dully. "Perhaps I should have 
 tried to work the miracle then — who knows ? — and done 
 it. . . . But I can no longer — that is all." 
 
 "Why was it ? What killed the gift ? " 
 
 He pointed to the valley that was covered with the dusk. 
 
 "A fire swept over the wilderness and left it charred — 
 waste." 
 
 "Tell me what it was," she insisted, as one who had the 
 right in her turn to the whole deep truth. "Tell me how 
 you lost your gift of healing." 
 
 "Who knows! . . . Perhaps it never was, as I thought — " 
 
 "But others Imew !" she cried. 
 
 "Self-deception — delusion." 
 
 "No! It was so!" 
 
 He began to pace to and fro over the rough-hewn planking 
 of the little chamber. When he spoke, it was less to her than 
 to himself. 
 
 "I thought I had the gift, as you call it, — something more 
 than mere knowledge or skill, — something more than 
 myself!" 
 
THE HEALER 333 
 
 "That is it," she cried yearningly, — "something outside 
 yourself — the gift — the Healer's gift to be used for others." 
 
 " 'Tis based on will — pure will !" 
 
 "Yes, will !" she cried. Her glittering eyes followed him 
 about the little room. 
 
 "Will born in pain and effort, forged in the fire," he 
 muttered; "the will to believe, the will to live, the will to 
 do!" 
 
 "And all that you gave the sick !" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "Once I thought so." 
 
 "You did," she corrected. 
 
 "I gave them what I had struggled for and won myself." 
 
 She Ustened for the slightest word, and he spoke slowly, 
 wearily, by fits and starts. 
 
 "Years ago when this was all a great wilderness I came here 
 alone, sick in body and mind, — with disease eating at me. 
 I lived over there in a cabin I built for myself — the house 
 of evil it came to be. . . . One day chance took me out 
 of it — I saw a light. ... I have never been there since. 
 But the evil has come back." 
 
 "You are afraid?" 
 
 "No !" he protested weakly. 
 
 "Yes," she insisted, "you are afraid !" 
 
 "I thought I had conquered the evil — possessed my will 
 wholly. I began to work, to make cures. ... It was a 
 great delusion." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " The great human delusion — I was merely in love with 
 a woman," he said scornfully. "I lived on the wings of 
 
334 THE HEALER 
 
 the wind — I was to be more than man. . . . But I came 
 soon to earth." 
 
 "And became less than man !" she whispered. 
 
 "Perhaps. ... I have stayed on the earth ever since — 
 it is hard and solid, the earth !" 
 
 He laughed again discordantly. 
 
 " Yet ever since you have been longing secretly to get 
 back once more to the height, — on the wings of the wind ? " 
 
 "Oh, no — don't poetize! ... I remain on the earth 
 and prosper. Sell my drugs and talk — delusions — to the 
 good people who are eager to pay me a round sum for them." 
 
 "Ah, that is it !" the woman exclaimed with rising excite- 
 ment. "You try to get the same results with the drugs — 
 to mount on the wings of the wind with them. And you sell 
 your gift !" 
 
 "Well, what do doctors do?" 
 
 "Never mind the other doctors. ... I see how it is! 
 You cannot make cures any longer by yourself, as you used 
 to. So you give the sick drugs and more drugs — you tell 
 them pretty lies, as you tried to tell me, to soothe them — 
 and you trust the rest to Nature. I see ! " 
 
 "Precisely!" 
 
 "You sold your gift — that was your first mistake. That 
 was the beginning." 
 
 "Everything has its price in this world." 
 
 "Yes, almost everything," she said ponderingly. "Food 
 and clothes and shelter, knowledge, too, perhaps, — things 
 for the body and for the mind. But you cannot sell yourself, 
 — that is different ! You cannot sell your gift. It will 
 die if you sell that ! " she said positively. 
 
THE HEALER 335 
 
 "Well, I have made money — much money out of it — •" 
 
 "Deceiving people who trusted you." 
 
 "I had to." 
 
 "That is a lie — the bottom lie," she said calmly. 
 
 He looked at her with amusement. 
 
 "I sold my labor," she continued, "for my mother and 
 sisters, but I did not sell a gift like yours !" 
 
 "What do you think this place costs to run?" he asked 
 with a laugh. 
 
 "Oh, thousands — millions — what difference does it 
 make?" 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 "But you need not sell yourself — one never has to sell 
 oneself. Never ! That is where you were blind." 
 
 "If I hadn't—" 
 
 " You might have died, — well ? " ^ 
 
 "Large words," he pronounced disgustedly. 
 
 "Not just large words !" She stood erect, with burning 
 eyes, and met him face to face. "I see it all now. I have 
 been lying here all these days, wondering what was the curse 
 that was bhghting your Healing Spring, — the disease that 
 was eating my Healer ! . . . Now I know. You are killing 
 yourself. You sold the gift God gave you — ■ you alone, one 
 out of millions — sold it for money, much or little, what 
 matters it ? And you tried to make it come back with drugs, 
 with lies, with little rules and baths and strokings of the 
 body — all tricks, tricks, — the tricks of the trade." 
 
 "Isn't that what most doctors do every day — tricks ?" 
 
 "For them it is well enough — they never had a gift. 
 They patch, let /them patch ! . . . But you, — oh, my 
 Healer!" 
 
336 THE HEALER 
 
 The doctor leaned heavily against the stone wall and kept 
 a moody silence. The woman watched him. 
 
 "In those other days," she asked gently, "you lived here ?" 
 
 "Yes. I made this cabin — with my own hands. I laid 
 stone upon stone to build it." He tapped the rough stone 
 idly with his hand. " In those days I was a worker — I had 
 faith!" 
 
 "And you were the Healer !" 
 
 " I built this little cabin of will, — pure will, — each rock 
 set pliunb with its mate. I dragged them into place with all 
 the strength of my body. I built it all, slowly. And as I 
 built it I stripped away from me lust, and the craving for 
 drink and drug. I became a man, laying these stones one 
 upon another, here in the solitude of the wilderness, in the 
 icy winter with the snow and the wind beating upon me." 
 
 He spoke in a low voice and stretched his arms apart and 
 swept the wall with his touch, as if he would once more feel 
 as he had felt then, filled with fiery will, the vision before his 
 eyes. 
 
 " I know each stone in these walls — my back was bent 
 with the weight of it. . . . And out of them I built myself." 
 
 "The Healer !" she whispered, as if something in his ap- 
 pearance, in the low chanting tone of his voice, had revived in 
 him the man that was once there. 
 
 "As I strove to build, the chains of lust and weak desires 
 fell away — forever, I thought. . . . But they have wound 
 themselves again about my feet." . . . 
 
 " You built it as a home for some one ? " 
 
 " A temple for my soul, as the preachers say, and the poets," 
 he corrected harshly. "Only I confounded my soul with 
 
THE HEALER 337 
 
 her — a woman ! . . . No matter, it escaped somehow. 
 And this house became empty, deserted, as you found it when 
 you came." 
 
 He stepped to the door, the tale having been told wholly. 
 
 "And now?" she demanded, passing in front of him. 
 
 "Now?" he asked vacantly. 
 
 "Yes ! Now that the whole truth lies before you?" 
 
 He laughed harshly. 
 
 " Now that you know what has become of your Healer ? 
 
 . . You can stay or go as you like. You know the inside 
 of this doctor's bag of tricks as few patients do — you can 
 judge for yourself what is best for you. Perhaps you will 
 want to go on and seek elsewhere for your Healer ! " 
 
 He stopped to laugh ironically. 
 
 "When you find him, keep fast hold of him. I mean keep 
 your faith in him — if you can ! " 
 
 "I was not asking for myself," she said. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, and passing around her made 
 for the door. 
 
 "I shall not leave," she whispered. "I shall wait here — 
 for my Healer to come again — " 
 
 "As you like!" 
 
 " I shall wait for him to bring me my miracle ! " 
 
 They stood close together in the complete darkness that 
 had fallen. She could hear his heavy breathing. 
 
 "That cannot happen," he said dully, "any more than 
 the wilderness can come again about the mountain." 
 
 "Something better than the wilderness may come to the 
 mountain and the valley. I have faith in my miracle !" 
 
 She was alone in the dark. 
 
IV 
 
 To the pretty German baths, which Mrs. Goodnow's last 
 medical adviser had recommended for her rheumatic gout, 
 word came occasionally of the doings at that other healing 
 spring far away in the new world. The doctor's wife had 
 prolonged her stay abroad into the summer, although her 
 husband had not yet joined her, because of her mother's 
 rheumatic gout and other family complications that seemed 
 to her to demand her presence. The two little girls were 
 "getting the languages," besides all those more intangible 
 benefits that Americans are supposed to acquire by foreign 
 residence. There were many other members of divided 
 households at the baths and elsewhere on the continent. 
 Vera Travers having dispatched her Gerald to his banking 
 had established herseK comfortably with Nina Farrington 
 in a villa neighboring Mrs. Goodnow's. Elport had taken 
 them all on a motor trip through the Rhine country, and 
 American friends happened upon them almost daily, so that 
 they were in no danger of feeling lonely. 
 
 Helen had urged her husband to leave his work for a few 
 weeks and refresh himself in this agreeable life, but his 
 rephes had been vague and imsatisfactory. From her old 
 friend. Dr. Percy, she got most of the real information 
 about her home that she had. He wrote regularly and 
 fully. His earUer letters had contained cheerful announce- 
 ments. The doctor had recovered something of his old 
 
 338 
 
THE HEALER 339 
 
 energy after a short vacation in the woods and was in good 
 shape for the summer season, which was always the most 
 trying period at the Spring. And the summer had opened 
 auspiciously. "It promises to be our most successful 
 season," Dr. Percy wrote in early Jime. "The region has 
 wholly recovered from the fires, the camps are filling up for 
 the summer, and new ones are building. We shall be very 
 gay — except for the large hole you leave unfilled ! " There 
 followed a Ust of notable names of summer visitors to the 
 Lake. The names meant more to the doctor's wife than they 
 had in earlier years, because in her visits to the city and in her 
 travels with her mother, she had acquired a large store of 
 that small family chronicle which any woman with social 
 aspirations easily absorbs. The Thornton Howards, the 
 Payson Blakes, — these were real acquisitions to the San- 
 guishine colony ! And the doctor's camp had an interesting 
 list of patients, — "Williams, the famous operator in wheat, 
 has come, and Mrs. Howard Gardiner — the one who was 
 once Mrs. Gardiner Howard, you remember — has the Locust 
 Cottage with her companion, a maid, and two nurses — a 
 sad case," etc. "A few locomotors, of course" Dr. Percy 
 concluded; "we shall not have a room to spare. " 
 
 Dear Percy ! the wife thought, as she finished his letter — 
 so loyal and devoted, and so tactful. If it had not been for 
 his good sense and his soothing methods of handling difficult 
 patients, there would have been many a storm, especially in 
 the doctor's irritable condition. Yes, Dr. Percy was the 
 mainspring of the prosperous estabUshment, and thoroughly 
 earned his handsome salary. She could rest content away 
 from the Lake so long as he was there to help her husband. 
 
340 THE HEALER 
 
 But the next letter and the next were less satisfactory — dis- 
 turbing, in fact. There had been some sort of disaster at the 
 Healing Spring. A nurse had been discharged, with charges 
 and countercharges, — gossip of course among the patients and 
 also among the summer people at the Lake. "The nurse 
 has given out that she was ordered by the doctor to increase 
 the dose — you probably saw her story in the newspapers — 
 it was of course greatly exaggerated. There was no real 
 danger, and Mrs. Gardiner came around in a few hours. 
 She was well enough to leave the next morning. . . . But 
 it was all very unpleasant. The doctor is so far from well that 
 I have not liked to discuss the matter with him. I think he 
 should take a vacation." Evidently Dr. Percy felt the 
 strain of the establishment, and yet would prefer to have 
 the doctor away — strange situation ! " When do you sail ? " 
 he asked in the next. " I'm lu-ging the doctor to go into the 
 woods for a week. He is in very bad shape." This last was 
 twice underlined. It seemed to hint of facts that the young 
 doctor hesitated to write the wife. Yet she lingered on at 
 Langen Schwalbach, not wilhng to believe that affairs were 
 as bad as her imagination would paint them, not sure 
 that her presence could do much to mend them, — not 
 sure of her influence with her erratic husband. 
 
 "Old Gray Jack has been off on another spree," Dr. Percy 
 wrote. " He has been talking to some of the patients very indis- 
 creetly and is a general nuisance about the place. He should 
 be sent away, but the doctor won't hear of it. Something 
 will have to be done with him." Old Gray Jack drinking 
 again, — "on sprees," — the thing was incredible ! Helen re- 
 called the man's story with a queer foreboding of misfortune. 
 
THE HEALER 341 
 
 She mentioned the fact to Vera, who said with a laugh, 
 "Those men are never really cured, you know. It always 
 breaks out some time, so Gerald says." 
 
 That was hardly comforting. She took Dr. Percy's last 
 letter to the villa garden to read it over. It was of unusual 
 length. ^ 
 
 "I wrote you before, I think," he said after some slight 
 preliminary gossip, "that the doctor has not picked up after 
 his last trip to the woods as we had hoped, — is rather worse. 
 Hughes and I do all we can, of course ; I have made most 
 of the visits outside, but the patients grumble; they will 
 have the doctor every day, you know. They are beginning to 
 talk — think there's something wrong. If he had only joined 
 you ! But he won't leave the place now — stays by himself 
 most of the time at the Eyrie, and that is very bad for him — 
 he should not be alone." Of the dire fact, which Dr. Percy 
 hinted at, the wife had yet no suspicion, and the little doctor 
 could not bring himself to be more explicit, on paper at least. 
 "He takes Gray Jack's lapse from virtue too much to heart, 
 and yet he will do nothing with the old scoimdrel. . . . 
 Williams left yesterday — the grain man — much dissatis- 
 fied, it seems. A rather vulgar person from Minneapolis, 
 you know, but one it was just as well to please. There have 
 been two or three other defections lately — we are not as 
 full as we were. But I can hardly get the doctor to look at a 
 new case. . . . 
 
 " Did I tell you, by the way, of a mysterious patient who 
 arrived about a month ago, unannounced — a Miss Eva 
 Smith? I foimd her one day sitting outside the office, a 
 poor, forlorn little woman in black, sitting there in the sun 
 
342 THE HEALER 
 
 like a stray cat ! She had just drifted ashore, God knows 
 from where. Had heard of the doctor somehow and found 
 her way up here. We were crowded then — had turned 
 away a number and had a long waiting list. But she would 
 see the doctor and somehow managed to, and he must have 
 taken an interest in her. For she has been here ever since 
 and latterly, I beUeve, has begun to get well. I thought we 
 could do nothing for her, and so did the nurse, she was in 
 such bad condition when she arrived. A working woman, 
 I believe, all run down. Nobody seems to know anjrthing 
 about her. But the doctor has shown more of his old interest 
 in her case than I have seen for a long time — visits her every 
 day whether he comes to the Spring or not. She is in the 
 little house on the cliff that has been shut up for so long.". . . 
 
 Helen dropped the letter into her lap at this sentence, and 
 it was some time before she resumed her reading. 
 
 "Just lately the doctor has taken another tack. He has 
 begun to fire patients right and left ! Yesterday he sent 
 away two. Mrs. Philhps was one — you remember her ? 
 Mrs. Boyden Phillips from Washington — she was with us 
 all last summer, and you Uked her, I believe. The doctor 
 told her that she wasn't worth working on — it was time and 
 trouble thrown away to cure her — she didn't really want to 
 get well, etc. The poor lady came to me with tears in 
 her eyes. I tried to calm her down, but she said, 'I was 
 never so insulted in all my life. He talked to me as if I were 
 a bad child. Of course he can't be himself.' I am afraid he 
 is not, though yesterday seemed like old times. Do you 
 remember when he packed off that broker chap, told 
 him he wouldn't take his gambler's money? . . . Mrs. 
 
THE HEALER 343 
 
 Phillips's going has created a sensation in camp, — she was 
 such a friend of the place, — a real advertiser ! She knows a 
 lot of important people. . . . 
 
 "After Mrs. PhiUips, he 'went down the line' as the boys 
 say, and the patients all looked like whipped children when 
 it was over. He told them some awful home truths. First 
 it was the ' locomotors ' (poor devils, they couldn't run away !) 
 and then it was the hysterics, and last the plain prostrates — 
 he means to get them all out on the stone pile ! Well, I 
 suppose the shaking up may do some good — but we can't 
 stand many such whirlwinds or we shall be without patients. 
 He stopped off the medicines. ... In a word, dear Mrs. 
 Holden, one heart will be gladdened when a certain lady once 
 more shows her smiling face in these parts and — " 
 
 At this point Helen rose from the garden seat, folded the 
 letter, and went into the villa to send a telegram engaging 
 cabin reservations on the next steamer. She said to her 
 mother when that poor lady protested at being left alone, 
 "I'll send Nora back for you — I am needed at the Lake." 
 
 " Is it that mad husband of yours who is making trouble ? " 
 the old woman asked peevishly. 
 
 "Things are not going right at the Spring. I had a long 
 letter from Dr. Percy, which disturbs me — I must get back 
 there as soon as I can." 
 
 "Things will never go right with him," the old woman 
 rasped. " I always told you that ! " 
 
 "Will you return with me or shall I cable Nora?" 
 
 "It's so comfortable here," the old woman whimpered, 
 "and you took the villa for the season at such a price !" 
 
 "Very well, I'll cable Nora." 
 
344 THE HEALER 
 
 "Why didn't you divorce him when you found out what he 
 wasUke?" 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow's Puritanic views of divorce, it would seem, 
 had undergone a remarkable transformation since she had 
 been moving about the world and meeting quite respectable 
 ladies who had either exchanged husbands or dropped hus- 
 bands at will. 
 
 "You forget, mother, whose money we are living on since 
 the Colonel and Nora's husband made away with Dad's," 
 her daughter replied curtly. 
 
 "We have been very unfortunate since your father died. 
 ... It might have been some other man's money, however, 
 — not that crazy — " 
 
 But her daughter had gone to order the maid to pack her 
 trunks. Her thoughts were less filled with the picture of 
 disorder and financial disaster at the Healing Spring, re- 
 vealed by Dr. Percy's letter, than with that mysterious new 
 patient — a certain "Miss Eva Smith." 
 
In the little garden upon the overhanging rock Eva Smith 
 was moving about slowly, cutting the thick summer growth 
 with a pair of shears. Where she passed through the tangle 
 of the neglected garden she left behind her in the open path 
 faded weeds and dead stalks. At times she paused in her 
 task of priming and looked out over the Lake to the blue hills 
 and the broad valley before old Macatawa, which rose into 
 a cloudless September sky. A little smile of hope and con- 
 tent came over her thin hps as she gazed upon the mountain. 
 When she bent to her task her black dress still fell away from 
 her slender body, but she moved with the spontaneity of 
 health and worked steadily until the doctor's step upon the 
 path arrested her. She stood in the midst of the dead growth 
 and waited for him to come to her. 
 
 He walked with the alert step of a busy man, — of one who 
 had already taken in the time of confusion a determined 
 course. His face, though pale, no longer had the unhealthy 
 pallor of recent months. He smiled as he saw the woman, 
 and when he spoke his tone was less that of doctor to patient 
 than of friend to friend. 
 
 "Out so early and at work !" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes! The morning tempted me out. I must work! 
 And this garden has been left too long neglected." 
 
 "Nothing has been done with it for five years — five 
 
 345 
 
346 THE HEALER 
 
 years," he repeated, a momentary shade passing over his 
 face. 
 
 "All that time ! It has gone back to the wild." 
 
 "Yes — to the wild. . . . But this bending over in the 
 sun will tax your strength." 
 
 "I have more strength than you suspect," she replied 
 quickly. 
 
 " I know that ! . . . Who would have thought a month 
 ago when I found you over there huddled against the door 
 that you would be working to-day like a strong woman !" 
 
 "The miracle came," she said in a low voice, with a smile. 
 
 " You may well call it a miracle ! . . . But I had no part 
 in it." 
 
 "Who knows?" she said slowly. 
 
 "I have been the patient — your patient," he admitted 
 abruptly. 
 
 She smiled, while he selected a large thistle from the heap 
 of dead stuff and hurled it over the cliff. 
 
 "Yes," she murmured, watching the flight downwards 
 of the whirling thistle. "I am well! I shall not have to 
 drag myself wearily through the world after all, a burden 
 to myself and to others. The weight has somehow slipped 
 from my shoulders — almost." 
 
 "Good!" 
 
 " That was what I expected when I came." 
 
 "And your faith has been answered," he said heavily. 
 
 "Yes ! . . . Soon I must go back to my work." 
 
 "Don't think of it yet," he said hastily. "After what you 
 have been through with, it takes a long time to reestablish 
 permanent health." 
 
THE HEALEE 347 
 
 "Not always I" 
 
 "Why must you hurry?" 
 
 "Because my work is waiting for me — as yours is for you," 
 she added softly. 
 
 They stood beside the edge, silently gazing at the water 
 beneath into which the thistle had fallen and was floating 
 aimlessly on the little waves. There was movement on the 
 shore across the Cove. The trim little, launch of the camp 
 was at the wharf waiting for passengers. Presently a woman 
 got into the boat followed by two nurses with numerous bags 
 and bundles. A sardonic smile crept over the doctor's face as 
 he watched the embarkation and the boat starting out across 
 the Lake in the direction of the Settlement. 
 
 "There goes another patient, — the third this week, — and 
 two of the nurses with her. They get spoiled here, waiting 
 on rich people — I shall have to go back to the nuns, who are 
 immune to worldhness. That is, if I have any nursing to be 
 done. At this rate there will be no one left at the Spring." 
 
 "You will not send away all the sick?" 
 
 "All but those I can really help." 
 
 " You could not help her or the others that have gone ? " 
 
 "No !" he said shortly. "Derelicts allj — spoiled. They 
 had no sound fibre left in them to work upon." 
 
 With a gentle smile the woman murmured softly: — 
 
 "Perhaps they will find their healer." 
 
 "It must be the God who made them, then !" 
 
 "Yes, the God who made them — in one form or another." 
 
 He walked restlessly back and forth in the cluttered gar- 
 den, his brow furrowed with thought. At last he exclaimed 
 to himself rather than to her : — 
 
348 THE HEALER 
 
 'But when they are all gone, where shall I find others, 
 more fit material for my hand?" 
 
 "They will come to you." 
 
 " Oh, the rich and the idle and the weak and the vicious — 
 they will come ! They have found the path to the Healing 
 Spring already. We are famous for patching derelicts — 
 that is our reputation!" He laughed harshly. "But men 
 and women who are in earnest about living, who have wills 
 to be roused, who can be awakened to life. . . . No, they 
 don't come here any longer, — since the wilderness has gone 
 and this has taken its place." He pointed to the roof of a 
 new camp on a neighboring island. 
 
 "Then you must look elsewhere — out in the world!" 
 the woman suggested, with sudden daring. 
 
 "In the world — go to the city?" the doctor questioned. 
 "Never 1 I said they should come to me. I will stay here 
 and wait for them, if I wait alone." 
 
 "No, you must go into the world, — into the big, big 
 world filled with men and women, laboring and suffering, 
 real men and women, who need you, — who are waiting for 
 their healer," she said firmly. 
 
 "I left the city because one could not do real work there — 
 merely patch and sell drugs — and pocket the pelf." 
 
 "You came into the wilderness first to find yourself, to 
 heal yourself, and make ready for your work." 
 
 "Yes — that was it." 
 
 "Now your wilderness has left you !" 
 
 "I, too, am a derelict on its shores !" 
 
 He pointed meaningly to the row of blasted trees along 
 the mountain ridge. 
 
THE HEALER 349 
 
 "But this wilderness is only for youth," she said, coming 
 nearer him, "where they can wander and learn to find their 
 way. . . . For men there is the other wilderness, — the 
 world of men and women where they must work !" 
 
 The doctor looked away dully. 
 
 "That is no longer for me," he muttered. "I must stay 
 on here in my corner about my old Spring forever, remember- 
 ing what it might have been. There is nothing else for me." 
 
 It was the faint cry of the broken ideahst, who perceives 
 his defeat and has the strength merely to nurse the fragments 
 of his dream. The woman looked at him pityingly, then 
 resumed her gardening, and for some minutes nothing could 
 be heard in that quiet spot but the snip of her scissors cutting 
 away tangled growths. At last the doctor turned on his 
 heel, and in a tone of commonplace advice remarked : — 
 
 " Don't tire yourself working in this old garden. . . . And 
 don't think of leaving us yet ! Stay and see the Spring under 
 the new conditions — with most of the patients gone. No 
 one needs this little house — it has been unused^ too long. " 
 
 She made no sign. He walked a few steps slowly, then 
 turned back and came close to her. 
 
 "Don't go — don't leave me now!" he cried. "I need 
 you. Don't you know that?" 
 
 She looked serenely into his troubled face. 
 
 "No, you need no woman." 
 
 "I built this cabin for a woman," he said slowly. "It was 
 to be a shrine for love. ... I was drunk with love then," 
 he ended harshly. 
 
 "And love failed you," she observed tranquilly. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
350 THE HEALER 
 
 "Are you a weakling that needs a woman's arms?" she 
 demanded with quiet scorn. "Because love failed you, will 
 you fail?" 
 
 He was silent before her accusing eyes. Because his love 
 dream had proved mere vapor of passion, his soul had grown 
 weary and come near death. 
 
 "My Healer," she murmured gently, "must be strong to 
 live without love if need be. He must not cling to the fire- 
 side — like a woman." 
 
 " One cannot live always without joy," he muttered heavily. 
 "You must know that. It kills! It is death in life — 
 worse than death itself." 
 
 A look of pain crossed the woman's pale face, as if he had 
 recalled to her the memory of bitter years. She turned 
 away. 
 
 "That is woman's hunger — happiness." 
 
 "Man's, too!" 
 
 She met his glance bravely. 
 
 " Then if joy be necessary to you — if to live you must eat 
 — take your joy !" 
 
 "You mean that?" ' 
 
 "Yes!" she cried bravely. "Take your joy — eat! . . . 
 But do not let it make you soft. . . . Take what you must 
 for your man's work. But do the work — fulfil your soul 
 and live." 
 
 With upturned head she looked fearlessly into his eyes, 
 as one who had suffered and achieved courage. 
 
 "Take my joy?" He repeated her words wonderingly. 
 "Feel life again, you say. Do you understand?" 
 
 "Yes!" she whispered. "I understand! . , , But, re- 
 
THE HEALER 351 
 
 member, for all the joy that you take, my Healer, you must 
 give back life to others, — life, more life, always life." 
 
 And slowly, as if she would reveal to the full all the meaning 
 that pain had taught her, she continued : — 
 
 "No woman shall swerve you from your path if you will 
 be a healer — the real healer of men. . . . We women are 
 but chance vessels for a man's will — or devils to destroy 
 him when he proves to be less than man." 
 
 For a long time neither spoke, and then suddenly she 
 asked : — 
 
 " Where is that cabin you lived in first, long ago ? " 
 
 "You mean the trapper's hut in the valley of the Seven 
 Lakes?" 
 
 He pointed vaguely towards the east. 
 
 "You called it ' the house of evil.' Because you struggled 
 there with your devils?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "You left it?" 
 
 " I built this house for refuge ! " 
 
 "You thought to escape the devils by love ! So you ran 
 away from them. . . . You should have stayed there in 
 your house of evil until there was peace in you, or death. . . . 
 But you ran away. That is what weak men do when they 
 can — run away." 
 
 " I thought the devils were dead ! " 
 
 " No ! You never dared go back to see ? " 
 
 "Never! . . . It is a gloomy hole — a little, narrow valley 
 like a dark pocket between two steep hills." 
 
 The woman meditated for a time, then exclaimed : — 
 
 "You must take me there !" 
 
352 THE HEALER 
 
 "Take you there?" he repeated, startled "What for? 
 It is a long way by canoe and trail — a good day's journey 
 from here." 
 
 "You must take me there !" 
 
 " Why that of all things ? " 
 
 She smiled mysteriously. 
 
 "Are you still afraid to go back?" 
 
 "Afraid !" he muttered uneasily. 
 
 "Afraid of yourself?" 
 
 "It is an ugly place, with unhappy memories," he replied 
 evasively. 
 
 "I must see your house of evil — you will take me there !" 
 she insisted. 
 
 "What is the use of going back?" he demurred. "I have 
 never been near it since ! " 
 
 "But the devils followed you over the hills." 
 
 "Yes — they came here." 
 
 "So you must go back and meet them there !" she cried. 
 "Can't you see ? You ran from them to get joy — happiness. 
 You built this shrine to hold a woman and her love !" Her 
 voice trembled with a light touch of scorn. "You built it 
 here upon a high rock in the full sunlight. But your devils 
 followed you into your shrine, and made themselves at home. 
 They are eating you now !" 
 
 "Yes," he groaned; "pride and lust and weakness of 
 will." 
 
 "Weakness of will — the worst of all !" 
 
 After another long pause she said softly : — 
 
 "So we will go back there together, you and I, and meet 
 them every one." 
 
THE HEALER 353 
 
 The man looked gropingly into the woman's confident eyes. 
 
 "Then what?" 
 
 "Then you will know peace once more and joy — yes, 
 joy ! without which there can be no true health nor can you 
 give health to others. . . . Joy is the spring of life. . . . 
 But not the joy you have known." 
 
 "What joy?" 
 
 "The joy of perfect will," she murmured. 
 
 And as he debated her words with himself, she continued, 
 looking closely into his face with a wistful tenderness : — 
 
 "That is the joy of joys, my Healer !" 
 
 "And you would do this for me ?" he demanded, his hands 
 gripping her arms and drawing her to him. 
 
 A look of yearning — the defeated mother-look of woman- 
 kind — came into her eyes. 
 
 "I would do all for you !" she whispered. 
 
 "Afterwards?" 
 
 She shook her head slowly. 
 
 "What matters that to me? There will be no afterwards 
 for me — there can be none." 
 
 As he still waited, testing the metal of her nature with his 
 searching glance, she drew him to her, and said : — 
 
 "Can't you imderstand, my Healer? ... I said that 
 if life ever came to me again, I should not refuse it, like a 
 coward. It has come to me, terribly, with a blinding light 
 in its eyes. ... I see that I have endured pain always for 
 this chance to live now — for another. That is woman's 
 supreme joy." . . . 
 
 "But afterwards when you have made me whole and I go 
 my way — alone ? " 
 2a 
 
354 THE HEALER 
 
 She made a weary gesture of indifference. 
 
 " I shall have lived — what more can there be for me ? . . . 
 But you will come out of your house of evil a man once more. 
 You will become again the Healer — my Healer, whom I 
 saw in my dreams so far off and came all this long way to 
 find. . . . You will give me my joy?" 
 
 Her face broke into a radiant smile of hope, as of one that 
 stood upon the peak of life and looked upwards. 
 
 " That old story again ! " he exclaimed with a smile. " Can 
 you still believe in me now that you know all — see me as I 
 am?" 
 
 "I believe more than ever !" 
 
 "Remember, it is but a dismal hole, especially at nightfall 
 when the sun goes down behind the hills, and the shadows 
 begin to creep about you." 
 
 "I am not afraid." 
 
 "Then come — now !" 
 
VI 
 
 When the steamer docked, Helen despatched a telegram 
 to Dr. Percy to meet the North Star Express the next 
 morning. Then sending the children to her mother's house 
 with their governess, she sped northward, with a clear de- 
 termination to set her house in order. She had decided 
 to return alone in order to leave herself free to act deci- 
 sively. For six days she had pondered her problem and the 
 possible paths she might take for a solution. There was 
 divorce, which was often suggested by her mother. Her hus- 
 band had become impossibly trying — she had a woman's 
 grievance in his coldness to her — and now that he was ruin- 
 ing himself and his children's future, not to mention her 
 own happiness, by his eccentric conduct, she would have 
 ample justification before the world should she leave him and 
 take her little girls with her. But she was farther from 
 divorce when she landed at the dock than she had ever been 
 in her life. 
 
 In the first place she was not one to confess defeat thus 
 easily : she preferred to five on in a shell of marriage with a 
 man who had ceased to love her, whom she had found more 
 than trying, rather than let the world know her mistake. 
 Many women, she said to herself, did that, — probably most. 
 And then there was the question of support. As she had 
 reminded her mother, now that Colonel Blake had frittered 
 
 355 
 
356 THE HEALER 
 
 away their fortune in foolish investments, and Nora's young 
 husband had turned out badly, it was becoming a serious 
 question how the whole family was to live, — how she was 
 to accompUsh that orderly and smiling future that she always 
 designed for her two httle girls. They must have their 
 chance. And by that she meant much, — like any good 
 mother, — more than she had ever had for herself. So the 
 first thing she must do, clearly, was to reestablish the Healing 
 Spring, with Dr. Percy's help, on its former prosperous basis, 
 or take the doctor somewhere else and build up a new 
 business, as she had long ago wanted to do. 
 
 But such material preoccupations were by no means up- 
 permost in her mind those six days on the steamer and in her 
 berth in the sleeping car on the way north. Amid all the 
 plans and considerations that beset her busy mind there was 
 one dark centre around which her thought revolved — and 
 that was the mysterious woman, so casually mentioned in 
 Dr. Percy's last letter, — that woman charity patient, Miss 
 Eva Smith ! 
 
 The wife's pretty lips curved scornfully at the common 
 name ; she pictured a flaming, hysterical, forlorn woman — 
 the sort that twine themselves about a susceptible doctor, 
 such as she had often seen at the Spring. Never before had 
 she been disturbed by this woman thing. Her husband, 
 whatever his other faults were, had never become involved 
 with a woman, and she had excused much in his harshness 
 and indifference to her because of that confidence in him. 
 But now — yet why should the casual mention of this chance 
 patient so arouse her woman's antagonism? Something 
 supersensible seemed to tell her that here she must fight the 
 
THE HEALER 357 
 
 great battle of her marriage — against a woman named Eva 
 Smith. 
 
 Lying in her private compartment, in a pretty dressing 
 gown, her loose brown hair waving over her white neck, she 
 had but to look into the little mirror between the win- 
 dows to assure herself of her full woman's power. As her 
 mother plaintively said, she was better looking than she had 
 ever been, — fresh and strong, full of bloom. Vera's ad- 
 miring comment as she bade her friend good-by on the other 
 side rang in her ears, — "Whose conquest are you planning, 
 Nell?" 
 
 "My husband's !" she had laughed back, playing with the 
 truth. 
 
 " The Wild One ! I should say you had pretty well leashed 
 him by this time — doesn't he pull hard at the family trace ? " 
 Vera had retorted with a touch of compassion for the hard- 
 working doctor. 
 
 "Oh, one can never tell," the wife said evasively, with 
 the easy cynicism of the day, "about any man. It is well 
 to be prepared !" 
 
 Looking at her pretty face and graceful figure, stretching 
 her jewelled hands and examining their rosy nails, she felt 
 confident in the result of the coming battle for her woman's 
 rights. Other men found her attractive, — even old Elport, 
 who had ihung about Schwalbach at her command all sum- 
 mer until business had called him home. She was at the 
 very apex of woman's power, not so much the fearful mother 
 as she had been these latter years ; more seductive to a pas- 
 sionate man, who had once yielded to her. Her lips closed 
 firmly in a confident smile. 
 
358 THE HEALER 
 
 Men were apt to fall into the mire of vulgar intrigue, so 
 her mother said, — especially brilliant doctors, who are more 
 exposed than other men, as Nina Farrington had informed 
 her, possibly from personal experience. Yet she would not 
 have expected it of Eric — her Wild One. He might kill 
 her in a gloomy rage ; he might leave her in one of his dark 
 moods and disappear, never to be heard of again. Some crazy 
 act like that he was capable of. But not mere common 
 infidelity ! 
 
 Her finger touched the long scar above her temple, from 
 which the brown hair fell away, and her smile faded. That 
 was where the knife in his hand had entered. He had 
 snatched her from a living death or death itself with his skill 
 and his courage — with his will. After that there should 
 have come nothing in all the world to divide them. And yet 
 they had been divided — were divided. Not so much in 
 space or time as in spirit, they had been divided ever since 
 the first winter. Her fault ? Had she been fully grateful 
 for the gift of her life? She had given gift for gift, — given 
 herself, — woman's utmost gift. Thus she defended her- 
 self. 
 
 Suddenly the conviction came over her that it was too 
 late; her mad haste to reach the Lake was useless. She 
 had lost ! She sat upright, clenching her hands until the 
 sharpened nails bit into the soft flesh. She had lost him from 
 the beginning — never really had had him all these years 
 since. Now that she saw the truth, it stunned her hke a blow. 
 . . . But he was her husband by marriage, the father of her 
 children, and she would not let him go — never ! If all that 
 was left her was her technical position of wife and mother, 
 
THE HEALER 359 
 
 she would fight for that — until the end. Thereafter on 
 the long journey she stared moodily at the winding land- 
 scape of field and woods, while the train rushed through the 
 wilder valleys of the northern hills. . . . No, never ! Her 
 woman's grasp was firm, to hold the shadow of her life, 
 against this other woman, — all else. . . . 
 
 In this mood, with weary, set face, she descended from 
 the train, almost falling into the arms of little Dr. Percy, who 
 was there to receive her, bowing and smiling, in his old r61e. 
 
 "Heavens, but I'm that glad to see you, princess, I could 
 hug you !" he cried. But beneath his voluble greeting she 
 could detect a weight of anxiety, a nervousness, as if she had 
 come inopportunely after all. Under the shower of his 
 effusive speeches she braced herself for the worst. 
 
 When they were flying over the dark water toward the 
 Eyrie in the doctor's little launch, he began again : — 
 
 "It makes a bad world seem good to see you sitting there. 
 Highness ! . . . Had a bully time ? . . . Buy lots of 
 clothes?" 
 
 "Never mind the frills, Percy," she answered. "Tell me 
 — everything ! " 
 
 "Well," he stammered. "There isn't so much to tell. 
 You'll see fast enough for yourself ! " 
 
 Then he dove down the hatch to fuss with his engine, and 
 she waited impatiently for him to reappear. 
 
 "Where is the doctor ? Did you tell him of my coming ? " 
 
 "He had gone when your telegram arrived." 
 
 "Gone — where?" 
 
 "I don't know — up the Lake somewhere in a canoe." 
 
 He dove again into the hatch to fuss with the engine, as if 
 
360 THE HEALER 
 
 he hoped in this way to escape from her question, but when 
 he reappeared it came relentlessly. 
 
 "Did he go alone?" 
 
 "No — there was some one with him." 
 
 "Whom?" 
 
 "Orie of the patients — " 
 
 "That woman?" 
 
 "Miss Smith — did I write you about her?" 
 
 "Whendid they go?" 
 
 "Sometime yesterday in the morning — he wasn't around 
 at luncheon." 
 
 "And they haven't come back?" 
 
 "Not when I left the Spring." 
 
 Then as if in reply to her tightening lips he exclaimed 
 hastily: — 
 
 "Don't think — that ... I'm sure—" 
 
 "Think what, Percy?" she asked coldly. "How has the 
 doctor's health been?" 
 
 "He seems better the last week or two, much more like 
 himself, and he's been working hard. But there aren't 
 manypatients to work with !" He laughed ruefully. "He's 
 cleaned the place out pretty nearly. We might as well shut 
 it up and save expense." 
 
 "He turned them away?" 
 
 "The ones that didn't go of their own accord — all but 
 four or five. ... I wrote you how he began — thank God 
 you've come home to save the pieces !" 
 
 "Perhaps I can't do anything, Percy," she remarked 
 wearily. "The doctor was always very obstinate about his 
 work, you know. . . . How did it begin?" 
 
THE HEALER 361 
 
 "He's been under a strain — a long strain," the young 
 man suggested with ready excuse. "No man could stand 
 what he has done for the past three years. In that time he's 
 built up a business of more than fifty thousand dollars a 
 year — think of it ! And it really all depended on him — we 
 didn't count except to do his bidding. That's enough to 
 tell the story, isn't it? Not a single day of real vaca- 
 tion in all that time, — no wonder the man began to go to 
 pieces." 
 
 "The doctor never cared for vacations like other men," 
 she said. 
 
 "Well, now he must take one ! . . . He has done more 
 than three men, — all the diagnosis and prescribing and this 
 psychotherapy business, — everything. Until this summer 
 he wouldn't let us take any of it off his shoulders." 
 
 So while the little boat chugged across the Lake Dr. Percy 
 opened more and more his simple heart to his old mistress, 
 revealing his perplexities, his sorrow for his admired master, 
 and an altogether comic woe over the loss of "so much good 
 business." "The best patients are the ones he's offended 
 most, telling them the truth about themselves. What good 
 does the truth do anybody ? What they want is to be cured, 
 and they'll pay their money for that !" 
 
 As the boat docked he ended hopefully: — 
 
 "It'll be all right now that you're back, princess ! We'll 
 straighten out by next summer." 
 
 "I don't feel so sure of that, Percy," she said heavily. 
 "Perhaps he's gone back to the wilderness !" She laughed 
 with an attempt at gayety. 
 
 "It'll do him good," the little doctor remarked hastily. 
 
362 THE HEALER 
 
 "I have thought we might close up the camp and go to 
 the city — I don't know." 
 
 "The place was doing so splendidly, — it would be a pity 
 to throw it all away. And it would take time — years — to 
 get started right elsewhere." 
 
 "Well, I'll see what can be done." 
 
 She waited while he made fast the boat, and then they 
 mounted the steep steps to the house. 
 
 "And all this began the time you wrote ms — with the 
 coming of the new patient?" she demanded. 
 
 "Before that — he was running down fast, neglected his 
 work. And — and — taking something, I think," he brought 
 out desperately at last. "Wasn't always just fit, you know." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 For the first time she comprehended the full import of the 
 letters. The old habit that had almost been forgotten, so 
 deeply buried in the past it had seemed to be, had risen from 
 the depths and taken fresh hold upon the man. 
 
 "He's been better lately," Dr. Percy hastened to add. "I 
 don't think he's taken anything since — since — All he needs, 
 I'm sure, is a complete rest, change." 
 
 The wife looked thoughtfully at the waveless black water, 
 then at the shadowy mass of the house above, without a 
 lamp of greeting, and shivered slightly. 
 
 "How still it is here, Percy !" she exclaimed, slowly resum- 
 ing the chmb up the steps. 
 
 "Yes, it's always quiet enough here. . . . Do you re- 
 member that first summer — when we used to go in swim- 
 ming off the boat-house ?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed!" 
 
THE HEALER 363 
 
 "And then you hit your head on that rock ! . . . I often 
 think of that day — when I carried you up these steps to 
 the house. How plucky you were ! " 
 
 "Oh, not — not that! Just ignorant of what it meant. 
 Neither of us thought it would amount to anything." 
 
 "No — and yet I felt awfully sorry — I — " 
 
 "Yes, I Icnow !" she said softly. 
 
 "So much has happened since — all because of your find- 
 ing that sunken rock out there in the water ! " 
 
 He tried to laugh, and was silent. The better man had 
 come between him and the woman he loved, and he had 
 loyally accepted his fate, ungrudgingly. Yet — it was the 
 rock ! The wife understood what was in his mind. Just 
 now it seemed as if the rock had been fatal to her after all. 
 It had turned her life from the commonplace shallows for 
 which she was fitted — from Dr. Percy, perhaps — into dan- 
 gerous rapids where the turbulent current threatened her 
 happiness. . . . No help now ! 
 
 "Is there no one at the EjTie?" she asked, glancing again 
 at the dark house. 
 
 "Not lately. . . . The doctor preferred to be alone. . . . 
 Shall I get you a lantern ?" 
 
 "No ! I know my way perfectly, even in the dark." 
 
 At the door she turned and said to her companion: — 
 
 " Good night, Percy — I'll see you in the morning. Thank 
 >you for meeting me — and for all the rest ! " 
 
 She held out her hand, but the httle doctor refused to take 
 it. 
 
 "Let me stay here until your husband comes back !" 
 
 "No, no," she replied hastily. "There's no telling when 
 
364 THE HEALER 
 
 he will come in — I shall go to bed at once. I'm tired. . . . 
 Good night, Percy !" 
 
 "If there's anything I could do — " he stammered, loath 
 to go. 
 
 "Thanks — there isn't." 
 
 "Let me get you a light." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 She stood before the door as if to bar the way. No one 
 should see the desolation within her home, within her. 
 
 "Well, good-by, then !" 
 
 She watched him plunge into the woods, and called out 
 cheerily: "Good night! Don't trip on the rock steps!" 
 Then with a comforting sense of the kindness of this com- 
 monplace young man, she opened the door and groped her 
 way into her home. 
 
 After a time she found a candle, and by its tiny flame she 
 could see the careless confusion of the large hving-room. A 
 camp bed had been pitched before the fireplace. The blan- 
 kets were tossed back as if its occupant had leaped hastily from 
 his bed unmindful of his surroundings. Charred embers 
 of logs lay in the fireplace, and the gray ashes had blown 
 about the floor, covering chairs and tables with the dust of 
 long neglect. On her precious old mahogany sideboard 
 there were dirty glasses, a flask, and several medicine bottles, 
 the remains of food, and an oar-lock. 
 
 She looked disgustedly at the untidy room. 
 
 She had left servants and a competent housekeeper to 
 care for the house and her husband, but he had evidently 
 got rid of them all, preferring his own camp ways. He had 
 always disliked personal service, and he was curiously slovenly 
 
THE HEALER 365 
 
 for a man so skilful and neat about his work. When she left, 
 he had straightway returned to the savage that was in him ! 
 All this dirty disorder emphasized to her the deep difference 
 between them, — an essential, elemental difference between 
 the Wild One and her civihzed self, with her dainty tastes, 
 her refined habits. Standing there in her neat traveUing 
 dress, with her little bag and danghng gold chain and orna- 
 ments, she felt that she was another sort of being from this 
 man, who preferred to Uve in dirt and disorder. Clean- 
 liness was her personal god — perfect suburban cleanliness ; 
 it meant to her comfort and decency. 
 
 With a gesture of despair she raised her skirt and picked 
 her way out of the neglected room and went up-stairs. Her 
 own large chamber was as she had left it, — untouched, 
 unentered. She threw open the casement windows and 
 looked out into the September night, glowing with starlight, 
 with a powdery wreath of mist around the edge of the still 
 Lake. She had never in all her life felt so much alone as 
 now. 
 
 She threw herself as she was upon the bed and lay there 
 long hours in the silent house, waiting for her husband to 
 return, thinking, — thinking ceaselessly over the long path of 
 her brief married life. Something told her that it was over, 
 — the battle lost before it had begun. Where had come the 
 parting of the ways ? She had been a loyal, loving, devoted 
 wife, all that a good woman should be, to her eccentric mate. 
 She had always striven for the best for him, for the two little 
 girls — for the family interest. A feeUng of anger with him, 
 who had wrecked her life, with life itself that had caught 
 her deceitfully by a dream and driven her to destruction, 
 
366 THE HEALER 
 
 choked her. She was all that any man might desire for 
 wife — and now ! . . . 
 
 "Give me a good, plain, ordinary, sensible business man for 
 a husband, who leaves the house with his newspaper after 
 breakfast and comes back at night from his work, tired out 
 and ready to be fed and amused !" 
 
 She had once thought these words of her mother's plebeian, 
 expressing a low ideal, but now they seemed to embody the 
 last wisdom on the marriage situation. 
 
 "No genius for me !" Vera had said, laughing. 
 
 They were the words of a true woman, who knew her own 
 nature. 
 
 It was long past midnight, and sleep would not come. She 
 rose impatiently and looked forth upon the dying night. 
 Somewhere out in that misty gray world of land and water 
 he was with another woman. The room stifled her. She 
 went down to the veranda. Should she go away before she 
 saw him? She might get the early express southward, 
 and on the morrow be in the city with friends instead of 
 giving battle with a wayward, ahen will. . . . There were 
 other men in the wide world, and she was young. . . . 
 
 Swiftly she struck into the old path that ran through the 
 dark firs to the little stone house. Her feet stmnbled over 
 rocks and roots in the neglected path, but she sped on, 
 more quickly, while the slow dawn came faintly through the 
 stiff black branches of the forest — sped on blindly. 
 
VII 
 
 At the fork in the path above the Spring, she hesitated, 
 then turned towards her old home. She paused before 
 the closed door and, instead of entering, followed the worn 
 path around the house to the garden and sank upon the 
 bench at the edge of the cliff. She noted the signs of recent 
 work in the rank growths that she herself had planted long 
 ago and then abandoned. Another woman had dared to 
 enter her garden and trim the weeds there ! 
 
 The dawn came on apace. The sun lifted over the eastern 
 hills, illuminating with broad bands of fiery colors the gray- 
 clouds. For a few minutes the sky exhibited the glory of 
 the sun's majestic ascension into the cloudy heavens, but 
 the royal scene did not arouse the attention of the waiting 
 woman. Her eyes searched the misty grayness that dis- 
 guised the waters beneath her. A sea of mist covered all the 
 lowlands and their well-known landmarks, erasing even the 
 bold contour of the lake shore. It was as if a new world 
 had suddenly been made out of the old, familiar one, — a 
 world of mist beneath, uncertain, vague, a world of rose and 
 saffron and gold above, which she would not see. 
 
 Suddenly, stirred by the rising wind, the sea of mist parted, 
 revealing a stretch of black water, and after a time she could 
 perceive afar off a tiny moving object, a speck upon the sur- 
 face of the Lake, coming towards her out of the cloud bank. 
 
 367 
 
368 THE HEALER 
 
 Her eyes fastened upon it eagerly. It grew larger, clearer, 
 advancing steadily in the lane of the sun's golden rays. She 
 knew it was the canoe that held the wanderers ! She 
 caught the flash of a paddle in the sunlight. They were 
 coming from the upper portage where she had so often been 
 with her husband on their way into the northern woods. . . . 
 
 Leaning on the cold rock she watched the approaching 
 canoe until she could distinguish the two figures in it, — 
 the man in the stern, crouching, with his long sweep of 
 arm as he drove the paddle through the water without a 
 ripple, and the other figure less distinct facing him. The 
 canoe swung around the opposite point into the Cove just 
 beneath the cliff so that by leaning outwards the waiting 
 woman could see their faces in the clear light of the dawn, 
 could hear the soft impact of the canoe upon the sand. 
 
 The two were silent, as if they had come through speech 
 to the repose of deep thought. The woman, her hands 
 clasped before her, shghtly bent forward, was gazing far 
 away over the waters, — upon her hps a smile of joy that 
 had come in sadness. Upon the man's face was a strange 
 calm, a high content, as if at last he had struggled forth to 
 the heights of his being and was now filled with a resistless 
 purpose. The wife knew that look of lofty mastery: she 
 recalled it from her dim past with a pang of regret — and awe. 
 She had seen it on his face, when it had been born of youth 
 and love and will. She had seen it long ago, within this 
 little house. But his face had changed with the years, and 
 the look of the healer in him had faded out of it. 
 
 This stranger now saw the mystery that had once been 
 hers ! With this other one he had restored himself to peace. 
 
THE HEALER 369 
 
 She leaped to her feet, stung with an intolerable sense of 
 wrong, suffocated with inner rage, because of this theft of 
 something that had once seemed indissolubly hers — albeit 
 an unrecognized possession. For a moment she tried to 
 think in her blindness what she should do now that they were 
 so near at hand. She started swiftly down the path, — to 
 strike, to tear apart, to destroy ! Then she stopped, arrested 
 by a subtle fear. It was too late ! The power of revenge 
 had already gone. The theft was complete. And a feehng 
 of the uselessness of all struggle for the lost swept over 
 her again, unnerving her will. There was nothing that she 
 could do, — nothing that would avail to give her what had 
 once been hers. Nothing ! It was the end. 
 
 Wracked by this conviction, she stood panting before the 
 closed door of the stone house, her limbs trembling weakly. 
 What could she do? Crawl away, before the two in their 
 content and high peace should find her here ? Fly from this 
 spot where joy and sorrow had both overtaken her ! She 
 who had sped northwards the day before, confident of her 
 power, found herself before the fate that was on its way 
 nerveless and weak. This was not what her excited imagina- 
 tion had pictured of vulgar intrigue between man and woman. 
 It was, instead, the spiritual fact that she had been quick 
 enough to read upon her husband's face. He had journeyed 
 to another world, leaving her behind. Love, it seemed, came 
 swift like lightning, and love went out, like flame, leaving 
 the void. . . . 
 
 She heard the footsteps of the two coming up the rocky 
 path, and drew back upon the worn stone of the doorstep, 
 quivering, listening. They were still silent, each with his 
 2b 
 
370 THE HEALER 
 
 thought, and did not see her. The woman stumbled once, 
 and the man put out an arm to steady her. They looked 
 into each other's eyes without words for a long moment, and 
 th^n the woman turned to enter the house. There was in 
 her eyes a strange light of triumph, of accomphshed good, 
 and upon her hps a smile of deep content. 
 
 As if some stranger, some servant about the place, stood 
 in her way, she bent her head slightly, murmuring, "Please !" 
 and put her hand upon the latch. The wife raised an arm 
 to bar the way, but it fell. With that lingering smile of 
 perfect peace the other pushed open the door, stepped 
 within, and closed it noiselessly behind her. . . . 
 
 Husband and wife, thus left alone, faced each other. The 
 calm serenity that she had seen when she had first caught 
 sight of her husband still remained upon his untroubled face 
 and in his quiet manner. This calm roused her woman's 
 fury : that he could be unmoved while she despaired ! 
 
 "So," she cried in a low voice, "you even brought her here. 
 Into our home !" 
 
 "The house was no longer ours," he said gently. "You 
 left it long ago — for another." 
 
 "But it was — " Her emotion stifled her, and she walked 
 away. 
 
 "There was no other shelter at the time," he said gently. 
 He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had disturbed 
 him in a deep preoccupation. 
 
 "Where have you been with her ?" she demanded savagely. 
 
 "To my old cabin in the Valley of the Seven Lakes," he 
 answered readily. 
 
THE HEALER 371 
 
 To that House of Evil, within the dark hills, where he 
 had always refused to take her — his wife — he had gone 
 with this strange woman ! The House of Evil — well 
 named ! 
 
 He walked along by her side in the narrow path towards 
 the Eyrie. She hurried almost to a run, wishing to escape 
 from him, — and to strike him. 
 
 "So you came back," he said in the same mild tone. "You 
 did not send word that you were coming ? " 
 
 "It was well that I did not !" 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 He turned upon her suddenly with blazing eyes, — those 
 terrible eyes she had always feared to rouse. 
 
 "You know ! You know I" she cried, with all the bitter- 
 ness of her defeated heart. 
 
 The doctor walked on slightly in advance, listening qui- 
 etly, making no attempt to curb the flood of accusation, 
 reproach, despair, that poured from his wife's lips. 
 
 "To think that after all I have given up for you it should 
 come to this I" she wailed. 
 
 " Given up for me — what ? " he asked, with the flicker of 
 a cold smile. 
 
 "My whole life! My position in the world, friends, 
 everything that I might have had ! " 
 
 "So that is what our marriage has been to you, — a sacri- 
 fice of your life, your friends, your position?" 
 
 "As long as you loved me I did not care \" she cried, hold- 
 ing to her sentimental ideal in self-justification. 
 
 "And yet, even from the first, it seems to me you were not 
 content without — " 
 
372 THE HEALER 
 
 He waved his hand to complete the thought. And again 
 the torrent of her anger broke forth, with all the fury of loss, 
 and she heaped her scorn upon him — recalling his outcast 
 state in the old days, the Colonel's ugly phrase, — "your 
 dope-fiend," — recounting the sacrifices she had made to 
 become his wife. In her sense of wrong long suffered, she 
 forgot pride and shame and the memory of old love. He 
 had been neither good father nor faithful husband, she said, 
 in her terrible need to make him suffer as she herself was 
 suffering. He listened calmly. 
 
 None of her bitter darts, it seemed to her, reached fully 
 home, — no fierce taimt, nor pitiful plea. He was incased 
 in a supreme indifference, a lofty preoccupation with his own 
 purpose. Thus they reached the Eyrie, and she flung open 
 the door, revealing the disorder of the place in the full day- 
 light. She pointed to it mutely, as if somehow it proved 
 her case against him and shrugged her shoulders in final dis- 
 gust and despair. He stood waiting for the end, and when 
 it seemed to have come, when she had flung herself upon the 
 lounge and lay exhausted, he turned to the door as if he would 
 leave. She started and cried: — 
 
 "You are going back to her! . . . Don't lie to me! 
 You—" 
 
 "I do not lie," he said quietly. "What is it you wish to 
 know?" 
 
 "That woman— " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 She paused in her wild outburst, perceiving for the mo- 
 ment the precipice before her. 
 
 "What is it?" he repeated. 
 
THE HEALER 373 
 
 "You love her!" 
 
 He waited. 
 
 "There is no love for me !" she gasped weakly. 
 
 "Was that not plain — long before ?" he asked coldly. 
 
 "But — but — " In her whirling mind she realized that 
 she had known it for a long time — that the tmearthly 
 glamour of her youth had faded hke the glow of the northern 
 lights, and what remained between them had not been love. 
 And it was to this other glow, — desire, passion, — that she 
 had trusted, — passion fitfully flaming, in man's way, dying 
 to be reborn at her touch. Now she saw that desire does 
 not bind the spirit. She stood before her man abjectly, 
 without a hold upon him. 
 
 " So — you will leave me," she gasped. " It is the end ? " 
 
 "The end was long since." 
 
 "You will leave me !" she cried hoarsely. 
 
 "We will settle all that when it is time," he said, turning 
 to the door once more. 
 
 "You are going to her !" she cried. 
 
 He turned and looked at her calmly. 
 
 "Yes !" and he was gone. 
 
VIII 
 
 Aftek her husband had left, she went to her room to fetch 
 her wraps and bag, with a vague purpose of going somewhere 
 at once, until the night express was due. Then she thought 
 of Dr. Percy, who would surely come to see her sometime 
 to-day. He might help her — at least he would ferry her 
 across the Lake to the hotel. She felt suddenly helpless, 
 like a child lost on a city street in a strange world of 
 confusing demands. She must get to her children, to her 
 mother, to her friends, in order that she might feel the reality 
 of things once more. . . . She would not stay in this house 
 another day with an alien man. 
 
 She started to leave, but she could not go. Her feeling of 
 competence, her readiness to meet emergencies of the day' 
 before, had utterly deserted her. She was weak and helpless 
 before her fate like any other woman. Why? Because of 
 her husband's conduct, she said. But she did not know that 
 he was guilty. Because she saw now that he did not love 
 her. But she had known that in her heart before. Then 
 because of her, this other woman who had slipped unawares 
 into her place. Even against her she could not long maintain 
 her first rage. The frail, worn creature, dressed all in black, 
 who had passed her like a wraith at the cottage door, was 
 no possessive woman to be struggled with. She was not 
 the expected image of the seducer ! 
 
 374 
 
THE HEALER 375 
 
 After all, what was her husband's relation with this forlorn 
 creature ? This was the all-important truth that she must 
 know. At first her anger had carried her away into pas- 
 sionate abuse, — the defeat in her heart had made her mad. 
 But, she said to herself now, if he had not been unfaithful 
 to her in act, the situation was not hopeless. Womanlike 
 she came back to the trivial question of fact, — the point 
 of physical fidelity. That was the sole test which genera- 
 tions of her ancestors had implanted in her by which to 
 judge the marriage bond. Anything — but that ! 
 
 She walked up and down the veranda, debating. Perhaps 
 her husband would come back, and they could calmly get 
 to the bottom of things. But the noon hour passed, and the 
 soft September afternoon wore away — and no one came to 
 the Eyrie. Her worst suspicion was again confirmed. 
 
 "He went to her — and they have fled together !" she said 
 to herself. 
 
 Her face burned with fresh anger, and now she waited no 
 ■longer. She must have certainty ! She ran swiftly down 
 the path to the stone cottage. The golden hght filtering 
 through the thick branches of the firs dazzled her eyes. She 
 closed them and rushed on, trusting to her feet. As she 
 approached the end of the path, she controlled herself and 
 began to walk quietly. At sight of the familiar gray wall 
 a sudden faintness made her weak. Now she would know, 
 surely ! She crept to the door. It was ajar. She pushed 
 it open — the room was empty ! They had gone already, 
 — the cowards ! Guilty, of course, — the common story. 
 
 She entered the house. The large room was warm. A 
 fire of faggots was dying on the hearth. The place seemed 
 
376 THE HEALER 
 
 curiously not her habitation, her old home, but another's. 
 It had the peculiar atmosphere of another, who had just left. 
 In a jar upon the window ledge some stalks of vivid red cardi- 
 nal flowers glowed. On the couch before the fire the pillows 
 were crushed, as though some one had just risen from them. 
 This subtle presence of another made the place oppressive 
 to her. She went over to her old chamber, but turned back. 
 With a glance about the unfamiliar living room she started 
 for the door, but her eye caught sight of a book lying on 
 the table with a sheet of paper across the open leaves. 
 
 She seized the book eagerly, and the paper fell to the floor. 
 It was a worn volume of poetry, — a cheap anthology of 
 English poets, much read and marked. She knelt down 
 and searched upon the floor for the paper that had fallen 
 under the table. It was a leaf torn from the book, and on it, 
 beneath the printed lines, was written in a small, wavering 
 script in which the letters seemed to have been formed 
 slowly, painfully : — 
 
 " My Healer ! The miracle has happened — I have known 
 perfect joy ! Now I shall go back to my life and work. 
 Farewell !" and beneath in even finer letters: — "No woman 
 can bend the will of a true man." 
 
 There was no signature. The letters of the "Farewell," 
 wavering at first, seemed to grow bolder, to run up at the end 
 into a flourish of triumph. 
 
 She dropped the leaf on the table, and stood gazing before 
 her, arrested, wondering. They had not gone together — 
 the woman had fled alone. She could not understand. She 
 heard a step outside that she knew must be her husband's. 
 It was at this hour he made his round of evening visits to his 
 
THE HEALER 377 
 
 patients. He entered and looked about the empty room as 
 if seeking some one, then went to the chamber door and 
 knocked. As he turned away she pointed mutely to the 
 paper. He read it at a glance, and holding it in his hand 
 stood still, very still, scarce breathing. She did not dare 
 to look at his face. . . . 
 
 She herself had become calm, after all the storm of the day, 
 with a strange sad calm. Noiselessly she moved to the 
 window, which was swung wide open, and looked out over 
 the water. The sun was sinking down behind the still Lake 
 in a cloudless sky. There was the perfect calm of a dying 
 September day, — a wistful radiance in the air subtly chim- 
 ing with the defeat of human hearts. It was the autumn 
 vesper peace before the winter months of silence in the forest. 
 The woman's eyes filled with tears for the first time that day, 
 as over a hopeless death. Why was it so dead, so dead — 
 the dream she had once dreamed here in this little room ! 
 
 Suddenly her tear-filled eyes perceived a boat upon the 
 water, — two men rowing a woman up the Lake. The 
 woman's face was turned upward, as if the gaze were fastened 
 on the house upon the cliff. The boat was taking this other 
 one away — forever, she knew. She turned and saw her hus- 
 band behind her, looking out into the Lake. He had seen 
 the boat. He knew what it meant. Would he follow her ? 
 
 Holden turned towards the door, then stopped, as if his 
 will had stayed a blind impulse. . . . 
 
 Time passed. She looked about the room, which seemed 
 to her stranger than ever. It had become the sanctuary 
 of another's life — her sanctuary. And she still shared 
 
378 THE HEALER 
 
 with them ! Oh, that could never be ! She must escape 
 from this intolerable spot. . . . What had been of such 
 intense importance before, — to know whether this other 
 one had been his wholly in body as well as in soul, — was 
 no longer her affair. For one moment of emotional illumina- 
 tion she rose above her tradition and was able to compre- 
 hend how immaterial this physical fact was. She would 
 never ask, she would never know, more than she knew now. 
 In some mysterious fashion these other two had been brought 
 together at the crisis of their lives, and had risen together 
 by some hidden communion to a definite purpose, which did 
 not concern her. 
 
 "What shall we do?" she asked, seating herself wearily 
 on the couch, and staring into the fireplace, where the last 
 of the faggots were crumbling into ashes. 
 
 At her words Holden started from the revery in which he 
 had stood and crossed to the fireplace. He stood there, 
 leaning against the broad breast of stone in his familiar 
 attitude, waiting for her to speak out her thought. 
 
 "I can't stay here any longer," she murmured with a ges- 
 ture that seemed to include every object in the little house. 
 "I must get away — go to my children." 
 
 "Yes, the children will need you." 
 
 "Now more than ever !" 
 
 He made no response, and she remarked : — 
 
 "I suppose you will stay on here." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 She started, for an instant thinking that he meant after 
 all to follow this woman. 
 
 "I shall stay here for a little while until I have settled 
 
THE HEALER 379 
 
 everything — and then I shall go!" He made a vague 
 gesture. 
 
 "You would never consider leaving before !" she exclaimed, 
 thinking of all her futile efforts to move him away from the 
 wilderness. 
 
 "My work here has ended," he said simply. 
 
 "But where will you go ?" 
 
 "To the city," he replied promptly. 
 
 "That is always what I urged you to do — and now 
 when — " 
 
 "There is a difference," he interrupted. "I am not going 
 now to become a fashionable practitioner as you wished. 
 I go," he said slowly, "out into the wilderness again — the 
 wilderness of men, to work there ! " 
 
 And she divined with a pang that in this formulation of 
 the purpose of his life it was not herself, but that other woman, 
 who had spurred him to the resolve, — the one who had the 
 courage to leave him. 
 
 "Oh, it makes no difference — now," she said mournfully. 
 And after a pause she murmured to herself, "If that 
 fire had only come down here to the Lake and driven us 
 out!" 
 
 "It would have been the same result," he replied calmly. 
 "Accidents never alter the real pattern of things — some 
 other circumstance would have placed us where we are 
 to-night !" 
 
 While she was rebelliously pondering this idea, he con- 
 tinued slowly, quietly, positively, as if he would show her 
 the naked truth of their tragedy : — 
 
 "You don't understand what has happened with us two." 
 
380 THE HEALER 
 
 "I understand that you don't love me — probably never 
 did!" 
 
 " Women can't see the deeper reasons, but it is well for us 
 to be clear so far as two human beings ever can be clear with 
 each other." 
 
 She waited, following him with her eyes as he strode back 
 and forth before the empty hearth. 
 
 "I saved your life !" 
 
 She bowed her head between her hands. 
 
 "At that moment of fate, when I was low, you came thus 
 by accident into my world — a creature finer, more daring, 
 more beautiful, than I had ever seen !" 
 
 A little smile crept over the wife's tense lips. She raised 
 her head, as if listening to a music long forgotten. 
 
 "At least so I made you out to myself, — though others 
 did not see all that, perhaps. . . . Oh, we men — coarse 
 brutes as you called us this morning in your anger — 
 are often foolish poets. ... I worshipped my image of 
 you. I made you my creature of the heavens at whose 
 touch I was ashamed. I rose from my slough — I cast 
 out the dirt within me — lust and drink and despair. Men 
 do that when they love — when they dream of heaven. 
 With the light of your face before me I built this hut of stone 
 — my temple for you, for my own soul that should be stain- 
 less for you ! You were far away, wandering across the 
 ocean, but to me you were here by my side always, as I laid 
 stone upon stone in my temple, as I fought myself and 
 conquered — to bs fit for you to possess." 
 
 His eyes flashed, and his voice rose and fell in cadence to 
 his thought. Then after a pause, in duller tones : — 
 
THE HEALER 381 
 
 "But that vision, which was with me night and day, was 
 merely the creature of my own brain — that was not you!" 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "We men — brutes you named us — have that delirium 
 sometimes. You call it romance, poetry, idealism, and love 
 us for it. . . . Sometimes it is more real than life itself !" 
 
 His vibrating tones stirred her against her will. 
 
 "And you seemed to share my vision — that is also what 
 happens with men. It is their egotism : they think the 
 worshipped creature is one with them in their dreaming non- 
 sense ! It's the way they are commonly caught for mar- 
 riage. Women like the songs their poets sing them, lovers' 
 exaggerations, — the worship at their altar, the roses at their 
 feet, — mad fancies we men poets spin about you earth folk 
 creatures. ... So I took you away with me to my shrine 
 to make the life that never was on earth ! " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "Shrine for my goddess of air !" 
 
 " I loved it, too," she protested. 
 
 "For a time you thought you loved it," he corrected; 
 "you liked the strange wild place, the snow, the solitude — 
 the worship and the love. For a time it is sweet to play the 
 goddess. But it was not enough, — to be man's goddess in 
 a stone hut in a wilderness. Poor fool of a man to think 
 it ever could be enough ! . . . It is not civilization, which 
 women have made." 
 
 "But Eric," she protested slyly, "was it much I asked for, 
 — only friends, a few clothes, the little human things we 
 women love, — the gossip and the companionship of our 
 kind? Why, even the country people about the woods 
 
382 THE HEALER 
 
 flock to the settlements to see one another \ Was it strange 
 that after the life I had lived in my father's house I should 
 feel lonely and want a little place of my own in my own 
 world?" 
 
 "Not strange for a woman — just human," he granted. 
 "You were no fool poet. . . . The mistake we made was 
 to think you might be — like me !" 
 
 "It's inhuman!" 
 
 "Man's ideal must always be inhuman to the woman !" 
 
 "It's unpractical — " 
 
 "Just friends and clothes, the gossip and the little place in 
 the jostling world," he repeated. "They are practical?" 
 
 "And when I became a mother, I had another to think of, 
 and afterwards another child, — two other beings to think 
 of, beside you and myself." 
 
 "Yes !" 
 
 "And you yourself, Eric — we wives have to think of 
 our men — what's really best for them. Was this the best 
 place for your talents ? You were an able man — every one 
 who knew said so, and said you would be lost up here in 
 the woods. You ought to get out into the world and 
 struggle with your equals there like other men. ... It 
 would have been better if I had made you do it at first. 
 Then we should not have come to this !" 
 
 In her turn she became the accuser, and held up the ideal. 
 
 "That is the way, — the 'practical' way, best for woman 
 and child and man to struggle for a little place in the civilized 
 world?" 
 
 He laughed ironically, but she stoutly affirmed : — 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
THE HEALER 383 
 
 "I had a work to do, woman — man's work, not merely 
 to support a woman and her children and make a place for 
 them in the world ! " 
 
 His fist fell heavily on the table jarring the book of 
 verses to the floor. 
 
 "You could do it like other men, then," she retorted. 
 "They have their work to do, and women help them in it." 
 
 "My work was to make people whole — cure them of their 
 worst disease, themselves, — not sell them prescriptions !" 
 
 "There are good doctors in the world," she insisted. 
 
 "But my place was here !" 
 
 "Have you done very differently here from the doctors 
 you despise?" she asked, thrusting with quiet cruelty into 
 his sore. 
 
 "That is true," he said dully. "After all, I have not done 
 so differently — and that is why I am leaving. I have 
 taken in those who could pay my price, and patched them. 
 I have given them drugs to soothe their aches and save them 
 from their sins. I have talked the platitudes and fooled 
 them like all the others. But at first it was not so ! Then 
 I told them the truth, and that was why they began to come 
 to me from the ends of the earth. But I failed." 
 
 "Oh, you only make yourself think that. It was a great 
 success, everybody said so, until you began to get queer and 
 do strange things." 
 
 He laughed softly. 
 
 "As long as I made money, I was sane — like the others." 
 
 "We have to have money I" 
 
 "Much money — always more money — more things, — 
 more food, and service, and clothes, and friends, and travel, 
 
384 THE HEALER 
 
 — all the things that cost money. And when your uncle 
 lost your father's fortune, there had to be more money so 
 that your mother might be indulged as your father had in- 
 dulged her." 
 
 "This is very sordid ! I did not know that you begrudged 
 me the money I spent, and what I've given to my poor 
 mother." 
 
 "You did not know that money is blood, — nay more, — 
 it is the spirit of the man coined? A doctor who makes 
 fifty thousand dollars a year as I have done has coined his 
 soul and sold it." 
 
 "I did not know that you felt this way about it," she re- 
 plied coldly. In the world she knew, men made money if 
 they were able to. Her husband was an able man, and there- 
 fore he should make money : it was a perfect syllogism. 
 
 "We never talked about money," he said; "that was my 
 error. I knew you considered it vulgar to talk about money. 
 Now we must begin, however, to talk seriously about money." 
 
 He told her briefly of his affairs, — how he had sent sums 
 of money from time to time to their old friend Elport, who 
 had put it into the account he had started some years before 
 in Holden's name. There was altogether now a considerable 
 amount of money in Elport's hands, which was to be hers 
 from this time, and which for the present at least, possibly 
 for always, she must live upon with her children. She was 
 thus to be independent in a small way. She felt relieved, 
 even in her preoccupation, to know that she would not be 
 penniless. 
 
 "You could have gone on for years, Eric," she observed, 
 "making money — perhaps you will yet!" 
 
THE HEALER 385 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "What made you change so all at once?" she asked. 
 
 "It was not all at once. Nothing ever is. . . . I had 
 lost my power ! If I had ' gone on,' as you wish, it would 
 have come to an end sooner or later. I should have been 
 found out, as so many others are. For in the end people 
 are not wholly deceived. They know when the spirit has 
 died by the lack of works. And rich people even more than 
 the poor demand their money's worth." 
 
 "Your power will come back some day," she said con- 
 fidently. 
 
 "God knows," he answered solemnly. "I shall not try 
 to force it. If it ever comes again, I will not sell it for more 
 than bread." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. With such resolve she had no 
 sympathy. It was that sort of madness which had wrecked 
 their marriage. He did not understand life, and he would 
 not learn. 
 
 "It's all hopeless !" she exclaimed at last, rising wearily 
 from the couch. "Why do we talk? It comes to the same 
 thing, as it always does between a man and a woman, — 
 you no longer care for me as you once did. You are tired 
 of me!" 
 
 That was the farthest reach of her woman's philosophy. 
 The love of her man, for which she had given her all, was 
 hopelessly lost, and fatalistically she believed there was no 
 real reason for her bereavement. The love charm that she 
 once had for this male had lost its power — that was all ! 
 
 "Love — or passion? . . . Love died here," he said 
 softly, "when you first left its shrine !" 
 2c 
 
386 THE HEALER 
 
 She looked up and down the stone walls of the little room 
 in which their marriage had begun, — wonderingly, as if 
 she hoped to find the lost talisman there. 
 
 "And what has there been all the years since between us ?" 
 
 "Passion and desire — the decent lust of marriage — com- 
 promise and patching — pretense and utter loneliness ! " 
 
 "Oh !" she cried, as if his words were blows. "How can 
 you say that ! You — the father of my children ! It is too 
 awful!" 
 
 "It is the truth." 
 
 " If it had not been for that woman," she flamed resent- 
 fully, but before his stem look she became silent. 
 
 And after a time she said in a low voice: — 
 
 "What is ended is ended. I must go I" 
 
 With another look about the empty room she stepped 
 slowly towards the door, and her hand upon the latch turned, 
 — her last woman's defiance of her fate on her lips, — "Some- 
 where in all this wide world there must be love for me — a 
 man's whole love — and my happiness !" 
 
 With this bitter cry she flung open the door to escape from 
 the man who no longer loved her. 
 
IX 
 
 Through the open door there rushed at once a wave 
 of acrid smoke. Outside, the luminous September night had 
 become an inky black, through which the lights in the camp 
 below gUmmered uncertainly. The little valley within the 
 circle of hills about the Cove seemed to be a pit of smoke. 
 The fire, wherever it was, must be close at hand to fill the 
 night of a sudden with such a volume of heavy smoke. But 
 in no direction was there as yet a sign of flame. 
 
 The doctor followed his wife out of the house, and together 
 they stood under the eaves, looking into the smoky darkness, 
 trying to detect the origin of the fire, their hearts beating 
 hard. 
 
 That constant menace of the desecrated wilderness — the 
 forest fire — had not alarmed them this season. There had 
 not been a fire within hundreds of miles of the Lake, although 
 a scorching August and a rainless September had dried to 
 tinder the forest and the cut-over lands. After the great 
 fire of the year before, which had burned to the top of the 
 northern mountains before it stayed, Holden had set old 
 Gray Jack to clearing a broad lane, several rods in width, 
 between the piece of thick woods which he owned — in which 
 no cutting had ever been done — and the surrounding tract, 
 filled with dry slashings and dead growth through which fire 
 would run as through stubble. The hills that circled the 
 
 387 
 
388 THE HEALER 
 
 Healing Spring like the rim of a cup would form also a nat- 
 ural barrier to fire, unless the fatal flame should rise within 
 this broad lane. The question now was whether fire had been 
 carelessly started about the Spring itself or had leapt the 
 cleared space unnoticed by the old man, whose nightly duty 
 it was to patrol the lane from end to end of the property and 
 look for signs of fire. Once within this protecting barrier 
 fire would sweep resistlessly through the camp, the Eyrie, and 
 all the thick forest along the southern shores of the Lake ! 
 
 And this surely was no distant fire — or they would have 
 felt the choking smoke before, while they were absorbed in 
 themselves within the little house. It must be very close, 
 and yet all was pitch dark, without a flame in any direction 
 to indicate their peril. Suddenly, as they stood with beating 
 hearts, straining eye and ear, a vivid red flame shot up from 
 the hill top directly behind the Healing Spring. One single 
 torch of black red flame, it shone evilly through the gulf of 
 smoke. Then quickly there was lighted another, and 
 another, as the flames leaped upon the resinous flrs Uke 
 wolves upon their prey. At the same moment a noise of 
 confused voices came from the camp below, as of people 
 suddenly roused from sleep running distractedly to and 
 fro, calling to each other. One long cry, a wail of despair, 
 rose from the smoky pit : — 
 
 "Fire ! Fire ! Oh, my God, the whole place is on fire !" 
 
 Then Holden started. 
 
 "Rim to the Eyrie — get a boat !" he shouted to his wife, 
 leaping forward down the steep path to the Spring. In a 
 moment he had disappeared into the gulf of smoke and 
 night. Helen lingered on for some moments, crouched 
 
THE HEALER 389 
 
 against the stone house, watching with fascinated eyes the 
 flaming forest across the gulf. One after another the tall 
 trees, like city lamps, caught fire and flamed. The roar of 
 the fire as it rushed through the thick growth of firs was dis- 
 tinctly audible, every moment coming nearer. Its hot 
 breath began to scorch her face, and the air was filled with 
 flying points of flame. It seemed as if Holden's words had 
 come true : the wilderness was taking at last its long delayed, 
 often threatened revenge for the desecration men had com- 
 mitted within it ! With a mighty roar, a hungry, licking 
 mouth, the flames swept onward towards the flimsy dwellings 
 of men, eating the dead remains of the wilderness as it 
 cleaned the earth once more. It was the scourge, as Holden 
 had once called it, — the scourge that followed wantonness 
 and greed. . . . 
 
 When the sparks began to fall thickly about the stone 
 house, Helen turned, looked back once at the blazing circle 
 of the hills, then plunged into the forest path and sped blindly 
 on through the choking smoke and the dark, until, exhausted, 
 she stumbled into the clearing about the Eyrie. Without 
 daring to wait to enter her home she dragged herself on hands 
 and knees to the long flight of steps, down them to the boat- 
 house, where she could rest and breathe. She debated with 
 herself the possibihty of saving some of the more precious 
 things in the house, — a few of her qlothes, the silver that 
 Elport had given her, — but a shower of sparks on the roof 
 of the boat-house, the dull glow of the advancing fire, and 
 above all the fearful roar in the woods above, frightened her. 
 She launched a canoe, fiung herself into it, and paddled 
 wildly out into the Lake. It was well that she had not hesi- 
 
390 THE HEALER 
 
 tated longer, for as she floated clear of the shore a stream of 
 fleet flame shot down the hill behind, leaped thirty feet across 
 the clearing, and in one mouthful licked up the rambling 
 tinder box of the Eyrie. The light from its destruction was 
 thrown far out, reddening the dark waters, and by it she could 
 see for a few moments the flames at work within her bed- 
 room, devouring her precious possessions. Tears started in her 
 eyes at this new loss, of all the little things she had used and 
 had made intimately hers. Then she turned her back upon 
 the fire and began to paddle vigorously out of the intense heat 
 into the open Lake. It was the end, — the end of all her life 
 thus far. She said to herself that it was well the end should 
 come in this swift manner, wiping out every bond that might 
 bind her to her married life except her two children. A 
 fierce calm succeeded her tears. The roaring fire roused the 
 mood of destruction. . . . And Eric? With a shudder 
 she refused to think of his possible fate in that smoky furnace. 
 
 Some time later in the night her canoe was picked up by 
 Dr. Percy, who was towing behind his launch a trail of 
 smaller boats filled with the people from the camp at the 
 Healing Spring. He had seen Holden, he told Helen. To- 
 gether they had worked desperately to gather the frightened 
 patients — fortunately there were only a few of them left — 
 and get them with the nurses into the boats. Then when 
 all were ready to leave, and the young doctor was busy 
 starting his engine, Holden had gone back into the camp, 
 leaving word that they were not to wait, that he had his 
 canoe and would follow shortly. 
 
 He had probably gone back to look for old Gray Jack, 
 Dr. Percy thought. The old man was the only one of the 
 
THE HEALER 391 
 
 little settlement not accounted for. He had been seen late 
 that afternoon about the Spring slightly intoxicated, mutter- 
 ing complaints and threats, maundering to himself as was his 
 wont when in liquor. Where he got his liquor was always 
 a mystery, as Holden had warned every one at the Settle- 
 ment not to sell him drink. Probably the half-breeds, who 
 still hung about the Lake peddling and fishing, brought it to 
 him. At all events the last time he had been in this state 
 the doctor had threatened to send him away from the camp 
 and had chided the old fellow roughly, taking his bottle away 
 from him. So now Dr. Percy suspected that the man, whose 
 wits were not clear at the best, had either carelessly or ma- 
 liciously set fire to the slashings near his cabin, and in this 
 way satisfied his confused idea of revenging himself upon his 
 old master. He lived by himself in a little log cabin he had 
 built back of the Spring on that fire lane, which he was sup- 
 posed to guard. "And I suspect," Dr. Percy said in a signifi- 
 cant tone, "that's where the doctor went to look for him. 
 But he could never get in there then !" 
 
 Near the other shore the little flotilla of boats and canoes 
 was met by men who were starting out to help fight the forest 
 fire. They were heading for the old landing at the south end 
 of the Lake, where, if anywhere, the fire might be checked be- 
 fore it flashed across the river and started up the western 
 side. Dr. Percy turned back with them, telling Helen that 
 he would get word of Holden if he could. As the cheerless 
 dawn began to make an uncertain light through the smoke 
 fog that hung over the water, the little band of fugitives 
 reached the Settlement and found refuge in the hotel. 
 
 All through that day, when nothing could be seen farther 
 
392 THE HEALER 
 
 than a few feet, rumors were rife. The little town lived 
 in anxious terror. At first, word came that the fire had 
 already leaped across the river, and with a veering wind was 
 being driven towards them. Many had already left by the 
 morning train, and another long train of freight cars was held 
 in readiness with its engine to take the rest of the people if 
 the worst should prove true. Later the rumor was that 
 the fire had been checked, then that it had swung off into 
 the Belle River Valley and was threatening the Settlement 
 from the east. Another train of fugitives went out. But 
 Helen waited — for what ? She could not leave, at least 
 until Dr. Percy came back. So all that dreary day she hung 
 about the landing at the Lake with the crowd, trying to see 
 through the smoky atmosphere, listening to the rumors, her 
 heart dully aching. In the smoky dawn of the next day she 
 was called to the door of her room by Dr. Percy, who had 
 just returned from the fight with the fire, grimy, tattered, and 
 exhausted. 
 
 "Have you seen him, Percy?" she asked with a curious 
 calm. 
 
 "No ! But there's a man just in from the north who said 
 that he saw some one leap into the Lake from the cliff over by 
 the Cove. The man tried to get to him, but in the smoke 
 and dark he lost his way, and came on without finding him." 
 
 They were both silent. Dr. Percy said at last: — 
 
 "You know the doctor is a good swimmer ! He's prob- 
 ably got safe to one of the islands, or gone up north and 
 landed back of the fire and is making his way around by the 
 carry. I have sent men up there in a boat, and I'll go my- 
 self as soon as I can get some food." 
 
THE HEALER 393 
 
 So another day of weary waiting went by, but nothing 
 further was discovered. At night Dr. Percy persuaded 
 Helen to leave with him and the nurses, for there was no 
 telling whether another train could get out, the fire having 
 turned towards the railroad below the old landing. 
 
 "I believe he is all right!" Dr. Percy affirmed. "He 
 knows how to take care of himself in the woods, and he is not 
 a man to throw away his life for nothing. We shall get word 
 from him in the city !" 
 
 Thus at last the wife left, escaped from the wilds which she 
 had come to hate. For the last time she took that southward 
 journey to the busy world she loved. 
 
When Holden turned back into the doomed camp after 
 directing the others to leave without him, he had determined, 
 as Dr. Percy thought, to make at least one attempt to find his 
 old servant. He suspected that Gray Jack might be lying in 
 a drunken stupor in that small hut he had built himself al- 
 most directly behind the Healing Spring on the edge of the 
 camp property. If the fire had started there, as it seemed 
 probable, it was small use to search for the old man. But 
 he might have had sense enough to crawl back across the 
 broad lane, or the fire in one of its unaccountable freaks 
 might have spared the cabin — at least in the first rush of its 
 fury. At any rate the doctor would not leave without doing 
 what man could to find out his fate. Of late since his relapse 
 the old nj^n had been much on Holden's mind. He felt 
 unreasonably responsible for him, as well as deeply attached 
 to him. 
 
 Moreover, now that the end had come — that the camp 
 was destroyed and the last of the patients had fled — he was 
 unconsciously loath to leave the place until driven into the 
 Lake by the flames. In this mood he made his way up the 
 northern breast of the hills near the water, and after a wide 
 detour approached the rear of the Healing Spring. So far he 
 had been able to go outside the burned region, but as he 
 crawled through the underbrush to the summit of the ridge of 
 
 394 
 
THE HEALER 395 
 
 circling hills he came once more into the area where the first 
 destruction had been done. The trees were still burning, the 
 blackened undergrowth smouldering. The pace had been so 
 swift that already the mass of flame was two miles or more 
 away, beyond the Eyrie, which was in ashes, hastening before 
 the wind southwards to the end of the Lake. The choking 
 smoke and the intense heat drove Holden back from the ridge 
 the first time, but after resting himself in a swampy hollow 
 he crawled once more upwards until he could look down into 
 the bowl of the Healing Spring from behind. The grove was 
 burning angrily, the fire finding the little buildings tougher 
 meat than the dry woods. Again he was driven away by 
 the heat and wormed himself slowly forward in the direction 
 of Gray Jack's cabin. But the fire was so fierce, burning the 
 tall trees, that he was forced to give up and return to the 
 little swamp where he lay for hours half choked by the smoke. 
 Towards the morning he resumed his search, and this time 
 he was able to reach the smouldering remains of the cabin, 
 wherein he thought he recognized the charred body of a man. 
 The fire that old Gray Jack had started in his muddled state 
 of mind was still eating at his body. 
 
 Once more Holden made his way back up the hill to the 
 ridge above the Healing Spring. The wind had cleared the 
 air somewhat of the heavy smoke, and there was light enough 
 to see something of the devastation which the fire had wrought 
 in the little grove below. The Spring itself was a puddle of 
 steaming water at the foot of the blackened rock. A few 
 charred stumps stood guard about it. The cement conduit 
 that had been built to bring the water from the Spring to 
 the baths was still intact, monument of man's contrivance. 
 
396 THE HEALER 
 
 and also the stone hospital building on which the doctor had 
 worked the first summer of his marriage was standing roof- 
 less and windowless. The flames had passed through it and 
 gutted it. All the other buildings had been razed to the 
 ground : they were little moimds of ashes and charred lumber 
 and twisted ironwork. In the gloomy light of the smoky 
 morning the place presented the desolate face of complete 
 destruction, all the more melancholy because of its few 
 human remnants, worse than the burned forest itself. 
 
 For some time Holden remained there, staring down into 
 the ruin. The Idealist might thus behold the picture of his 
 ruined purpose, the fabric of his fair dream, which had melted 
 to its elements before the heat of fire. ... At last he 
 turned away. 
 
 The fire was still at work in the forest between the Spring 
 and the Eyrie, sending up a great cloud of smoke. But 
 a peculiarity in the draft of the wind had saved the headland 
 on which the stone cabin stood, grim and gray, with its 
 bank of charred firs behind. It was the only thing in the 
 valley that was as yet untouched, that was as it had been 
 before ! Holden made his way slowly through the hot embers 
 back to his old home on the cliff. It was stained by the 
 smoke and flame that had passed so close to its walls. Even 
 then a tiny tongue of flame was eating at the oak door, which 
 Holden brushed out with his foot. He dragged away some 
 burning logs that might set fire to it, locked the door, and 
 walked out to the edge of the cliff in the little garden. For 
 a few moments he stood there irresolutely, then threw the 
 heavy iron key far out into the Lake. It fell silently into 
 the water. . . . 
 
THE HEALER 397 
 
 Thus the scourge had done its work. The wilderness had 
 been revenged, and the weakness of man punished. Some 
 day the desolation about the Healing Spring would be covered 
 by a gentle growth of fresh green; the blackened hillsides 
 would give birth to a new forest. But not for him ! . . . 
 With a last look at the ruin of his beautiful dream he leaped 
 downwards into the Lake. When he came up he heard the call 
 of some one on the water, the sound of oars. But without 
 answering he swam steadily north up the Lake. 
 
PART FIVE 
 
The wilderness of men ! . . . These words came often 
 to the stranger's lips, while he roamed the noisy maze of the 
 great western city ; and as solitary, alone, he traced his way 
 up and down broad avenues, through narrow, silent streets, 
 into the recesses of the city, the image of that other, far 
 northern wilderness was always before him. In this vast, new, 
 human wilderness the sun was ever blurred by day and the 
 stars blotted by night with a thick pall of smoke. From the 
 thronged streets, out of the lofty buildings jostling together 
 went up a roar to the heavens mightier than any winter tem- 
 pest sweeping through the forests. Even in the dead hours of 
 night this human wilderness was never still, forever moan- 
 ing as if a caged animal were dreaming troubled dreams. A 
 checkerboard of ways divided its broad surface, and yet to 
 the stranger it was a trackless waste, without memorable 
 signs. From avenue to avenue, from street to street, it 
 repeated itself endlessly, as if the law in the human wilderness 
 was that all must be alike. Nevertheless, ia spite of its mo- 
 notony and squalor, to the man from the other wilderness it 
 was mysteriously sympathetic and compelling. It spoke in 
 myriad voices. 
 
 For days Holden wandered about the city, as once he had 
 wandered through the valleys and the hills of the north, seek- 
 ing to know his new home, to place himself in its maze. 
 From the noisy, dirty terojinal where he had been set down, 
 2d ■ 401 
 
402 THE HEALER 
 
 he passed through regions of railroads, factories, warehouses, 
 slaughter pens, lumber-yards, where gross labor was being 
 done; through dull, drab streets where tier upon tier the 
 workers were housed; then on to more orderly, more open 
 quarters, where the dwellings were larger, cleaner, where trees 
 and grass began to appear ; on at last to the very edge of the 
 prairie itself, where under scudding clouds of smoke isolated 
 factories, clumps of dwellings, rose like islands in a gray sea. 
 At last, he turned back — back to the centre of the wilderness, 
 where the crowded streets divided the lofty, towered buildings, 
 and up, up in these he went through the layers of busy 
 workers, — up to the very summits of the peaks of steel and 
 brick ! Far below lay the sprawling city in a smoky haze, 
 reaching out on all sides to vague horizons. Black lines of 
 railroads pierced the haze, running to other centres in all 
 quarters of the land, — other wildernesses of men. And 
 through the peopled maze meandered a sluggish, slimy stream, 
 laden with traffic, bearing its burden of trade to be scattered 
 afar over all the world. 
 
 Truly a wilderness of men ! Vast, swarming, verberant 
 with life ! Mornings and evenings dark streams of human 
 beings flowed to and fro across its surface, flooding and ebb- 
 ing factory and office building ; human beings, — two mil- 
 lions and more of them, struggling for bread and happiness, 
 camped here in the wilderness ! . . . 
 
 Everywhere might be seen the signs of doctors. The 
 names were German, English, Polish, Lithuanian, — men of 
 every race and nationality. Their signs hung in long fan- 
 tastic festoons before drug stores, were nailed to the walls of 
 brick and wood, or painted on glass window-panes. Doc- 
 
THE HEALER 403 
 
 tors for this and for that, — for every human ailment. 
 Among them some were ignorant, some were vicious, and 
 some were merely humanly weak and feeble. How many 
 were true healers ? There were thousands upon thousands 
 of licensed practitioners, one for every hundred or two of 
 human beings, — not counting the unlicensed and purely 
 charlatan healers that abounded. There were in all more 
 doctors than bakers or butchers or grocers; more doctors 
 than masons or carpenters or tailors, — doctors at every 
 corner, in every hotel, in every large dwelling-house, doctors 
 in the quiet suburban streets, layers of doctors in the lofty 
 office buildings. . . . Surely in this wilderness of men the 
 healer was much in demand ! . . . 
 
 Holden visited the medical schools, the hospitals, the dis- 
 pensaries, — those accredited centres of the healing trade, — ' 
 also the private hospitals and the sanitariums, and all the 
 places where through charitable agencies healing was offered 
 to the poor for nothing. He watched the city officers at their 
 perfunctory duty of cleansing the city and guarding the public 
 health. And the more he saw, the clearer it became to him 
 that all were much alike, — the little doctors in the suburban 
 streets selling their pills, despised by their more prosperous 
 brothers in the richer sections of the city, with metal or glass 
 signs before their office windows, and the leaders of the caste 
 in their offices within the lofty buildings, attended by trained 
 assistants. They were all alike engaged in the same trade, 
 — with better or worse equipment, from the doctor with his 
 tin sign hanging in the wind before the drug store to the great 
 specialist in his private suite. They were exploiting the 
 human body and the human soul for private profit. 
 
404 THE HEALER 
 
 Among the orthodox were many specialists, — for the eye 
 and the ear, the nose and the throat, the feet, the head, the 
 heart, the skin, the lungs, the intestines. Man's body was 
 divided into numerous small principalities, and each province 
 had its special priest or butcher or nurse. And these only 
 of the strictly regular, orthodox sects of healer — legally per- 
 mitted to hang out their trade signs and invite patients to 
 submit themselves to their science, to patch and prescribe 
 for them and charge fees. 
 
 In the same buildings with these orthodox, or in closely 
 neighboring buildings, were housed all the unorthodox, — 
 fakirs, irregulars, — osteopaths, faith healers, mind healers, 
 physical culturists, Swamis, Exodites, Introdites, masseurs, 
 etc., etc. — working cures by mind or muscle, — prophets of 
 the soul or of the belly. Each had his special formula, his 
 special explanation of the dire phenomena of sickness, — his 
 magic symbol or private panacea, — to be sold for a price 
 to those who could be induced to believe in them. These 
 unorthodox healers of the great wilderness were not without 
 reward, if without honor. Their signs were blazoned on 
 hundreds of windows, all up and down great buildings ; their 
 shops were crowded with credulous searchers for life ! 
 
 All these were of the professed members of the healing 
 trade. But outside of them — beyond the realm of the 
 orthodox and of the unorthodox alike — was the purely 
 religious and mystical healer, attracting such as had come to 
 reject science and pseudo-science alike, and preferred to trust 
 their bodies to mere words, ideas, which at least were harm- 
 less. Holden in his trail through the human wilderness 
 on Sundays passed the open doors of the temples where the 
 
THE HEALER 405 
 
 mystical healers gathered their followers. From these pre- 
 tentious places of worship came often the sound of robust 
 singing, and he might observe the votaries of the faith issuing 
 from their worship, — the men silk-hatted ; the women in 
 rustling or clinging garments of fashionable form, — a sleek 
 J and confident people rejoicing in a faith that preached health 
 and prosperity in the same breath. These having rejected 
 all healing of the physical sort, depending solely upon words, 
 mumbling, gibberish, and incoherent ideas, seemed to be not 
 the least intelhgent, certainly not the least healthy and happy 
 of the two millions in the wilderness ! They had uncovered 
 the hypocrisy of science and pseudo-science, — of precedent 
 and drug, — at least they had wiped the slate of knowledge 
 clean of all errors. . . . 
 
 Doctors, doctors, doctors ! As many doctors as teachers, 
 more doctors than ministers of the gospel. Some doctors 
 doubtless working faithfully and doing their little good, — 
 doctors trying to know and to see; other doctors preying 
 on the fears and the follies of feeble humanity — mere vul- 
 tures these. Like all men there were the strong and the 
 weak among them, the wise and the foolish; but all li- 
 censed to sell their healing for a price. Humanity in the 
 modern wilderness must be ailing, weak, and miserable to 
 ;|upport these doctors with the labor of their hands, to buy 
 with their earnings the advice of all these would-be healers, to 
 swallow their drugs. Was every man, woman, and child in 
 the city sick ? 
 
 Where among all these eager competitors should the 
 stranger set up his tent, hang out his sign, and open his shop 
 for the sick? Where should he bark before his table of 
 
406 THE HEALER 
 
 charms ? Among the high priests of the caste, the perfectly 
 orthodox in the httle suites of the lofty buildings, or among 
 the quacks at the corner drug store ? Among the flat build- 
 ings and hotels, or along the drab suburban streets ? Should 
 he hang out a tin, -wood, metal, glass sign with the magic 
 letters, — M.D. ? "I — Frederick Holden — hcensed by the 
 commonwealth to heal, am come among you for your patron- 
 age ! I will tell you truth for a price, I will give you advice, 
 will make you well, — for a price." . . . The healer on 
 the drab streets got his dollar or two, the fashionable brother 
 in the richer quarter a hundred or two, the renowned healer 
 in the private office a thousand or more — which should it 
 be? . . . 
 
 Thus Holden explored his new wilderness for many months, 
 learning its trails, debating all these matters, examining its 
 healing springs from laboratory to drug store. Often as he 
 walked the streets, especially in early morning or at nightfall 
 when the workers were going to and from their labor, he 
 looked into the faces of the passers-by as if he were seeking 
 some special one in the stream. Somewhere in the stream of 
 woman-workers there was a remembered face, with deep eyes, 
 — sad-glad eyes, — and determined feet, who trod her round 
 of life triimiphantly. It was the face of one who had come 
 to him from the wilderness of men to point out the true pathp 
 and refusing happiness had gone back to take up her burden. 
 In his heart he knew that he should never see that face again, 
 yet he looked for it always. 
 
 At last the stranger took root in the thick of the factory 
 district, not far from the spot where he had first begun to 
 
THE HEALER 407 
 
 search the city wilderness, — in a little brick box of a house, 
 one of a dingy row set back from the street near the slimy 
 river. On one side was a himiming factory; on the other 
 a power-house pouring out clouds of thick smoke. At the 
 corner was a swinging crane laden with doctors' signs. Near 
 by was a thicket of tenements, saloons, houses of prostitu- 
 tion, decayed lodgings, cheap hotels, — the jungle of the 
 wilderness, its heart. 
 
 He wrote Dr. Percy: — 
 
 . . . "Among others of the brethren of the trade in this 
 neighborhood there is an old herb doctor, a man who peddles 
 cocaine, an abortionist, an electrical massage fakir, — two 
 or three merely ignorant botchers — a nest of us healers !" 
 
 So he hung out his sign over his door, — "Frederick Hol- 
 den. Physician and Surgeon," — a modest wooden board that 
 could hardly be read across the street, — and within the dark 
 little house he sat down to wait for the sick to come to him 
 here, as they had come to him in the other wilderness. He 
 waited many weeks before the first patient entered the brick 
 house in search of aid. . . . 
 
 Holden was now nearly forty years of age, — at the crest 
 of man's activity, ready if ever to do his work in the world, 
 false paths having been explored and rejected, false lights 
 exposed. Life had worked the spirit of the man until it was 
 moulded to that permanent shape which is character. . . . 
 Alone in the rank swamp of the city wilderness he awaited 
 his task. 
 
II 
 
 Here one day Horace Elport found him. The fastidious 
 old man — now aging and gray and distinguished — came 
 down the squalid street, looking about the drab scene, turn- 
 ing up his nose quizzically. He did not like the coarser 
 haunts of men : he had always chosen unerringly the sunnier 
 side of the street, the cleaner path. Peering up at the grimy 
 fronts of the houses, he tried to read the obliterated numbers, 
 and finally, having detected the doctor's modest sign, he tip- 
 toed daintily through the mud across the street, avoiding 
 trucks and hucksters' carts with some sacrifice of his dignified 
 equilibrium. The door of the old brick house was ajar, and 
 he entered unannounced. 
 
 There were two patients waiting in the front room, an 
 anaemic girl and a laborer with a bruised hand. Elport 
 taking in the bare little room at a glance seated himself upon 
 the hard wooden settle before the grate fire and neatly drew 
 up his trousers at the knee, exposing his gray spats. A 
 whimsical smile broke over his handsome face, which slowly 
 settled into a look of meditation, as if he were trying to 
 fathom in his mind the workings of a mysterious and alien 
 nature. When at last he was admitted to the little rear room 
 that the doctor used for his private office, the whimsical 
 smile broke over his lips. 
 
 "I Vi^as passing through the city and thought I would look 
 
 408 
 
THE HEALER 409 
 
 you up," he said. "Percy gave me the address, but I had 
 the devil of a time finding your place !" 
 
 He looked over the dingy room, which was shrouded in 
 perpetual gloom on account of the factory wall behind the 
 house. His glance rested inquiringly on Holden, who re- 
 turned it with a calm smile. Even under the electric light, 
 it was apparent that the doctor had lost his pallor, was in 
 sound health, and was not moody. Filling a pipe from a 
 box on the mantel, Holden settled himself in his surgical 
 chair for talk. 
 
 "And why," Elport demanded, — "just here?" 
 
 "Why not? It is the heart of the city. ... In the end 
 one place is as good as another, I suppose, but intercourse 
 between doctor and patient is a little readier here than in 
 politer circles." 
 
 "Is it better worth while to treat that pale young woman 
 and that frowsy workman than Mrs. Delamar, whom you 
 turned away from your camp?" 
 
 "Sadie Laughlin is less likely to get intelligent help and 
 advice than Mrs. Delamar !" 
 
 "Do they want honest and intelligent advice?" 
 
 "Some do. . . . I hold my own pretty well against the 
 herb doctor and the other quacks. The people come — ■ 
 chiefly perhaps because I let them pay me what they can and 
 when they want to !" 
 
 " And on those terms do they pay — anjrthing ? " the older 
 man asked with a sceptical laugh. 
 
 "Almost all pay something, and considering what they 
 have they are more honest than their more prosperous fel- 
 lows. ... I get all the money I need." 
 
410 THE HEALER 
 
 "They pay — and don't have to !" 
 
 "You paid me — more than I asked. Why not they?" 
 
 " Incorrigible idealist — ass ! " the old man laughed. 
 
 Holden continued with a sigh: — 
 
 "The worst is that xmder the conditions of their hves one 
 can do little more than patch at them. They come and go — 
 when they are in trouble. You hand them a poultice — 
 that's all ! Now that girl you saw out there should be in an 
 institution. But there is no place to send her — ■ she must 
 work to live. I give her a tonic and try to teach her a little 
 hygiene. Some day she will marry — and then ? " 
 
 He broke off and added in a moment, as if summing up 
 his experience: "What we need is an institutional medicine 
 — hke the army. The sick should be segregated from the 
 well and placed where they can be treated best. That will 
 come some day !" 
 
 "A state phalanstery — the Healing Spring on a national 
 scale?" 
 
 Holden nodded. 
 
 "My dear fellow, it will not come in my time — nor yours !" 
 
 "No, but we are working towards it along with other 
 ideals which seem now quite hopeless to you." 
 
 After a pause Elport reached forward and tapped the 
 doctor with his thin hand. 
 
 "My dear fellow, you are an awful ass !" 
 
 "Very likely." 
 
 "Oh, I don't mean in giving up your camp after the 
 fire, though you might easily have rebuilt it and made it 
 better than ever. But I mean in the way you take life 
 generally ! " 
 
THE HEALER 411 
 
 Holden listened with an ironical smile, while the other 
 talked on. 
 
 "I'm pretty nearly an old man now. You saved me from 
 premature senility — and you saved my son from worse. 
 So I have every right to abuse you, and I am going to ! I'll 
 free my mind at least, for I didn't come a thousand miles 
 to swap the time of day. . . . You take life hard and wrong ! 
 Why not come in with the rest of us and be comfortable?" 
 
 "I shouldn't be comfortable." 
 
 "You might have had almost anything in your line you 
 went out for, — money, fame, friends, honors, — and you 
 take this ! You bury yourself in this hole !" 
 
 "My hole suits me well enough." 
 
 "But why sell yourself so cheap?" 
 
 "I tried the other way once." 
 
 "Do you feel your power here ? " 
 
 Holden looked at him sharply and replied after a time: — 
 
 "No, — not the power I once had! That may never 
 return." 
 
 Elport did not understand. So he returned to his theme 
 and dilated at some length on the sweet gospel of compro- 
 mise, concluding eloquently: — 
 
 "It's a good enough world, if you take it as other sensible 
 fellows take it, be easy and content yourself with doing your 
 best on your job and what good you find along the road. 
 . . . You can't reform the practice of medicine by giving 
 Sadie Laughhns free treatment ! " 
 
 Holden was silent. 
 
 "Well," Elport sighed, resuming in another tone, — "there's 
 another matter and a personal one, too." 
 
412 THE HEALER 
 
 He laid his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm. 
 
 " There's your family, — " 
 
 The doctor made no sign. 
 
 "You know they went to Europe this winter with Mrs. 
 Goodnow?" 
 
 " So Percy wrote me." 
 
 "Helen wanted to educate the little girls, and it's easier 
 over there. I advised their going over. They could hardly 
 live as they would want to in this country on what they 
 have." 
 
 "They have more than ninety per cent of American fam- 
 ilies ever have to spend," Holden replied quickly. ; 
 
 "Perhaps, but that's all damn nonsense, you know! 
 . . . You can't upset human nature by a fiat of your will, 
 man. Your wife has been accustomed to the ways of the 
 ten per cent." 
 
 "Unfortunately." 
 
 "You don't want your girls brought up over there, living 
 in pensions and all that, wandering about from place to place, 
 without a home." *■ 
 
 "Let them come back here, then." 
 
 "Into this house, — this neighborhood?" 
 
 Elport made a grimace. 
 
 "They are both girls," Holden remarked bluntly, "and 
 will probably become like their mother." 
 
 "A very good sort, let me add ! . . . Are you quite 
 wilUng to leave them entirely to their mother ? " 
 
 Holden nodded. 
 
 "They'll need a father to launch them successfully, even 
 if they are girls." 
 
THE HEALER 413 
 
 "I don't believe in that — they must make their own way, 
 girls or boys !" 
 
 Elport whistled. 
 
 "And marry any one that comes along?" 
 
 "Whomever they choose. It is their life — " 
 
 "You are worse than an ass," the older man laughed 
 ruefully. " You are quite mad ! " He rose. "I am sorry 
 if I have been inquisitive." 
 
 "You haven't been." 
 
 "I made a failure of my own marriage, as I told you once. 
 . . . Does it have to be ? She loves you still ! " 
 
 The doctor turned away impatiently. 
 
 "We men, I fancy, rarely ever understand women's lives. 
 They are made up of trivial things that seem unimportant 
 to us — and are unimportant. What counts for them is 
 mostly externals, — clothes, position, appearance, — all that. 
 . . . For the girls' sakes, shouldn't you try to give them 
 a little more of what all women want?" 
 
 "The surfaces? They have had too much of surfaces 
 already #" 
 
 Elport mused. Dr. Percy had said something about 
 another woman, — a mysterious patient who had probably 
 caused the trouble in the first place between the doctor and 
 his wife. It was the sort of tale that the old man compre- 
 hended only too well. 
 
 "We men have our little aberrations, too," he resumed 
 probingly; "we are not always content with the fireside and 
 the one face !" 
 
 Holden made an impatient gesture. 
 
 "Women have to forgive us sometimes. . . . But for 
 
414 THE HEALER 
 
 the children, for men and women themselves, — for every- 
 body all around, — it is best for both to forgive and forget 
 as far as they can — worry along somehow to the end." 
 
 With a certain pathos he developed further the golden 
 wisdom of compromise, especially in family life. As the 
 doctor remained obstinately mute, he said: — 
 
 "You know that Helen will never get a divorce, though 
 her family have urged her to — it is a point of honor with her 
 not to divorce !" 
 
 Holden made a gesture of indifference. 
 
 "The time will come when you will want those girls — and 
 you will regret the empty years when you did not have 
 them ! " 
 
 At this point they were interrupted by a messenger from 
 the drug store near by. A man had been crushed by a motor, 
 and, as no other doctor happened to be at hand, Holden had 
 been sent for. 
 
 "More patching!" he remarked, gathering up his little 
 ■black bag. "But this time fortunately, if it's a bad case, 
 he will be sent to a hospital." • 
 
 Elport accompanied the doctor to the corner, but at sight 
 of the curious crowd jammed in the store he hesitated. 
 
 "I'll come again some day," he said, pressing his friend's 
 hand. 
 
 "Do! . . . Only let us not dig up the past — corpses 
 must lie where they fall !" 
 
 "They are not corpses yet !" the old man exclaimed; but 
 Holden was worming his way through the crowd. 
 
 Elport sauntered on towards the respectable quarter 
 
THE HEALER 415 
 
 v/here his hotel was situated, and as he went he murmured 
 to himself : — 
 
 " Mad as ever ! . . . But there's something clean and 
 fine in him, too. . . . That dear little woman and those 
 two nice girls. . . . He's an ass — an awful ass ! " 
 
 Thus the voice of compromise, of worldly good sense, 
 expressed itself upon the defeated idealist. 
 
Ill 
 
 But the old man came again, and still again, to see the 
 "madman," the "ass," calling at the little brick house by 
 the river, or summoning him by telegram to dinner at his 
 hotel. He respected the doctor's injunction about letting 
 the corpses lie undisturbed, and yet he contrived to drop 
 casually some information about Holden's family. "They're 
 in Switzerland for the summer, — somewhere in the Enga- 
 dine. I shall try to run down to Florence this autumn when 
 I am over there to see them. . . . The old lady must be 
 a great care to Helen. She's quite helpless now, and very 
 fretful — the loss of her money has made her bitter." But 
 that loss of the Goodnow fortune, he hinted, might not be 
 permanent. All those waste lands, the cut-over districts, 
 in which the Colonel had foohshly invested his sister's money 
 in the hope of mineral discoveries, might pay some day. 
 Settlers were coming into the district more and more and 
 taking up farms. When the wilderness had been thoroughly 
 tamed, it would yield an abundant second crop. 
 
 " I shall urge them to come back to America when I see 
 them," he said. "They'll be happier here among their 
 friends, and it will be better for the little girls. Of course 
 they can't live in that big house of Mrs. Goodnow's — I've 
 told them to sell it. It's rented now and gives a fair income, 
 but such property deteriorates rapidly." 
 
 416 
 
±a.n niiiALiijJK 417 
 
 Holden made no comment. He seemed wholly dead and 
 cold to his family and their interests. Otherwise the old 
 man found him sound and sane, altogether more human than 
 he had ever been, going about his work quietly, peacefully, 
 living his narrow life in the midst of squalor, becoming grad- 
 ually known in his quarter of the city wilderness as an hon- 
 est, capable doctor, not greedy nor self-seeking, a good enough 
 citizen according to the rough-and-ready standards of the 
 neighborhood. He had had several encounters with the 
 health officers when he reported their shameful neglect of 
 duty, was pretty well disliked by his colleagues for his blunt 
 speech, — they spread stories about him of a criminal past, — 
 and latterly he had put himself in touch with some of the 
 charitable agencies that worked in the district. He was 
 recognized by them to be an educated, skilfU|l physician 
 — considerably above his environment — who was always 
 ready, when asked, to give his services for nothing. 
 
 Thus he lived the little life he had chosen in the round of 
 petty work, — taking the sick off the street, patching them 
 the best he could, helping this girl, tending that mother, 
 aware of the inadequate results he could obtain with these 
 chance patients. 
 
 "You can't put people on a solid basis, practising as we 
 must," he told his old friend. "There are a lot of nervous 
 cases I see among working-people that should have months 
 of treatment and attention. They come to me a few times 
 and disappear." 
 
 "Not so different from Jenks's situation and Farrington's, 
 and that of all the other fellows who patch us decent, pros- 
 perous citizens when we come to them with our aches," 
 2ii 
 
418 THE HEALER 
 
 Elport observed slyly. "We take the dose and listen to the 
 talk and go our way and make ourselves sick again ! " 
 
 Holden smiled. He was less stern these days, less denun- 
 ciatory. The wisdom that comes to men who have meas- 
 ured themselves with their ideals and failed, was his at last. 
 
 "We all do what we can," he said, "but the system is 
 wrong, — all wrong," 
 
 They were walking across the city in search of a new 
 experimental laboratory for the study of cancer, which 
 had recently been opened and which Elport wished to visit. 
 Their way lay along one of those endless avenues of the 
 city wilderness, monotonously ahke block after block. The 
 crowded thoroughfare was spotted with drug stores and 
 doctors' signs, several for each block. Holden pointed to 
 them to illustrate his contention. 
 
 "The whole profession should be institutionahzed, — all 
 medicine, all attempt at healing, — the schools, the hospitals, 
 the clinics, the dispensaries, the doctors themselves. The 
 state should control the schools and the hospitals and regu- 
 late the numbers and the work of the doctors, and should 
 estabhsh everywhere public dispensaries as their head- 
 quarters. No doctor should be permitted to receive fees 
 from his patients. That is the root of the monstrous ig- 
 norance and malpractice of the profession, — the private 
 fee. And the best doctors are beginning to realize it, and 
 prefer to work for a salary in an institution. . . . Medical 
 service should be free for all — and compulsory — pro- 
 vided by society as a whole for its own preservation and 
 betterment. It would be an enormous saving in mere ex- 
 pense, and in human life, also. From the beginning the 
 
THE HEALER 419 
 
 fee has debased the healer's art — the greatest of all arts — 
 made it a common trade. First there was the priest, who 
 healed by prayer, then the medicine man and all the tribe 
 of fakirs, preying upon humanity ! . . . The priests were 
 the original healers — it will be so again — we shall have 
 a new priesthood of healing ! " . . . 
 
 They found at last the modest building in which the pri- 
 vate foundation for the investigation of cancer was housed. 
 It was one of the many notable enterprises supported by 
 public-spirited men of wealth that were springing into exist- 
 ence to meet the imformulated demands of society for an 
 organized and scientific treatment of preventable diseases. 
 After they had inspected the laboratories, the infirmary, 
 the clinic, in company with an alert young doctor, they came 
 out once more into the glaring sun of the July day under 
 which the great city radiated heat. Elport expatiated on 
 the efficiency of the institution. 
 
 "And that," he observed dryly, "is the fruit of private 
 enterprise — the work of the rich you are so fond of abus- 
 ing 1" 
 
 "They are doing much to fight diseases — but that and 
 all other similar places started here and there in different 
 cities are but a scratching of the surface. Private effort, 
 no matter how liberally it may be supported, will never be 
 able to cover the human field properly, — to organize the 
 great war on disease, to build up a healthy society. . . . 
 The doctors and assistants in these research laboratories 
 will all tell you the same thing. Private enterprises are but 
 a few drops in the ocean that must be dealt with." He 
 waved his hand forwards, as if calling upon the sweltering 
 
420 THE HEALER 
 
 jungle of the great city to testify for him. "And public 
 hygiene and prevention is of more importance than any 
 cure. " 
 
 "You're in a great hurry, my friend !" Elport observed, 
 
 ■wearily. 
 
 Elport had more than a general interest in the subject, 
 although like many liberal-minded men of his generation he 
 took a lively interest in all modern agencies for increasing 
 civilization. His visit to the cancer institute, however, 
 had a special object. An intimate friend, who had recently 
 died, had left with him as trustee a very considerable sum 
 of money to be applied as Elport thought best, — "for the 
 aid of humanity"; and it was understood, so Elport con- 
 fided to Holden, that he was himself to contribute to the 
 object chosen a Uke amount, either now or by will. 
 
 "We often talked the matter over," he said, "and con- 
 sidered a great variety of objects, — education, for example. 
 But we could not decide on just the right thing, and it is 
 left to me because of my friend's sudden death to determine 
 the direction of the gift." So he had resolved to make a 
 serious inquiry, had travelled widely through the country 
 to see institutions, medical and educational. "In the old 
 days," he said, "we should have handed over our little bag 
 of loot to some university or hospital or other well-recog- 
 nized charity and let them use it. But to-day there seems 
 to be such a wealth of opportunity, — so many new needs, 
 things to be done by some individual if they are to be done 
 at all!" 
 
 He was much taken by Holden's phrase, — "institu- 
 
THE HEALER 421 
 
 tional medicine." Like many an ardent individualist, who 
 has prospered under the competitive regime, when he came 
 to settle his account with the world, he turned insensibly 
 towards a socialization of his energies. "I want something 
 enduring," he said, — "something as you call it 'institu- 
 tional.'" 
 
 His sickness and his acquaintance with Holden had first 
 interested him in medicine, and especially in the problem 
 of nervous diseases in modern society. The doctor's 
 work in the city had impressed on him this new demand 
 for the healer's art among the working-classes. Men and 
 women also suffered increasingly from intricate, abnor- 
 mal" conditions of body and mind, due to the severe 
 pressure of industrial life, the tyrarmy and monotony of 
 specialized labor. The complex of modern society was 
 thus taking its revenge upon the workers, who bore its 
 heaviest burdens, and the bravest efforts must be exerted 
 to adjust humanity to the new economic life. 
 
 "One can do little for these sufferers as they come and go 
 in the private office," Holden insisted. "They need a greater 
 healing spring — ^ and a new healer !" he added slowly. "Our 
 modern civihzation, if it is to become a real civilization, and 
 not go out again in blood and slavery, must be controlled 
 by the doctors, and especially by the experts in brain 
 processes, — must be guided and healed!" 
 
 As a result of this and other discussions, Elport wrote 
 Holden a long letter, announcing his decision. 
 
 "We shall found an institution for the study and cure of 
 nervous diseases, such as you and I have discussed. It must 
 be here in this city, of course, where my friend worked and 
 
422 THE HEALER 
 
 made his money, — helped by the labor of many thousands, 
 for whom, by the way, he always had more consideration and 
 sympathy than the large employer of labor is usually sup- 
 posed to have. . . . 
 
 "I have naturally been much concerned to find the right 
 sort of man to be the head of such an undertaking, to shape 
 its work and direct it into fruitful fields. Many names have 
 been suggested to me, since my purpose has become known 
 in your profession. The director should be a well-trained 
 man, abreast of all the scientific movements in medicine of 
 to-day, — not a mere successful practitioner, with a repu- 
 tation and a sanitarium. And yet he must be something 
 more than an investigator — a mere scientist like — and — " 
 (Here he gave two well-known names in the science of 
 medicine.) "He must have a passion for healing — the 
 director at least ! Such a man with attainments and repu- 
 tation, who would be ready to sacrifice his gains from 
 private practice and be satisfied with the modest salary we 
 shall offer, is hard to find, as you can well imagine. But 
 I think that I have found him. . . . 
 
 "Last night I dined with a number of doctors, and we talked 
 over the plans. You remember Dr. Jenks? When I asked 
 for names, he said without hesitation, 'There is one man 
 for you, and that is the fellow who ran that place up north 
 in the woods, — Holden. If you can find him ! I hear he's 
 gone off somewhere — ' Well, I have found him. . . . Will 
 you take the job ? You will have to move to this city, but 
 your work for the New Hospital (as I have decided to call 
 the foundation) will not be so very different from what you 
 have always done or striven to do. You will be paid a sal- 
 
THE HEALER 423 
 
 ary, — " and he mentioned the amount proposed, which was 
 generous enough as salaries range, though small compared 
 with the incomes of successful physicians. "You will be 
 free to practice privately if you choose, though I judge 
 that the work will take all your time at first. And you will 
 have the selection of your assistants, their training, — in 
 fact, complete charge of the institution. Our work, starting 
 in this comparatively small way, may develop into something 
 that both of us will be proud of." 
 
 He suggested one development, which he had in mind and 
 for which his own gift might be used, and that was the open- 
 ing of a free sanitarium somewhere near the city to be used 
 in connection with the Hospital, as a home for obstinate 
 and curious cases. 
 
 "Don't decide offhand," he concluded, "but give yourself 
 full time to think it over, my dear doctor. You can let me 
 know the next time I am out there, which may not be for 
 another month. ... I think that you will find this work 
 a tolerable compromise with life, — a practical solution for 
 your over-difficult ideals ! " 
 
 When, after a long discussion face to face, the two men had 
 come to an understanding, Holden said : — 
 
 " I will undertake the work, then, on these conditions, — 
 that I stay until I find you a better man to take my place, 
 or train one up, and that I shall do no consultive or other 
 work of private nature. ... I have sufiiciently explained 
 to you my OAvn failures and made clear to you that I am 
 not now — and probably never shall be again — the sort of 
 wonder-worker you are looking for, — the healer I might 
 
424 THE HEALER 
 
 once have been myself. But I can direct others to find the 
 right road. 
 
 "I have no doubts !" Elport replied confidently. 
 
 " It may be that because of my failure — my wasted oppor- 
 tunity up there in the wilderness — I shall be all the better 
 able to do your job. I know what to avoid. . . . When 
 do you begin ? " 
 
 "As soon as you will approve the architect's plans for the 
 building. " 
 
 That very evening Holden removed the sign from his 
 door. On the morrow its disappearance would scarce be 
 noticed, and in a few days it would not be remembered 
 that he had lived and worked there for five years. Life 
 flows and ebbs in the wilderness of men, — for the most 
 part unnoticed. 
 
 That night he walked the streets, as of old, and the hunger 
 in his heart rose as he looked into the faces of the passers-by, 
 — the thousands of working women in the stream. Some- 
 where in that stream was a face he wished to see. But should 
 he meet by chance those sad, deep eyes, — should he see that 
 wasted face in the crowd, — there could be but the momen- 
 tary greeting of eternal friends, destined each to follow his 
 road apart from the other. 
 
 "No woman," she had said to him, "should bind the arms 
 of a man ! " . . . That word was spoken in the other wilder- 
 ness of his youth, which had receded far into the background 
 of his consciousness, like some sad, beautiful, and tragic 
 event of the past upon which the doors of life had closed 
 forever. Five years of calm, uneventful labor in this new 
 wilderness of men had settled his destiny. It had given him 
 
THE HEALER 425 
 
 peace and sureness, but it had not given him back his great 
 gift. As he had said to his old friend : — 
 
 "If I felt in me the power I might once have had, if I 
 couli fulfil the ideal of my youth, I would never harness 
 myself to your cart — no matter how sound and true your 
 purpose is ! " 
 
 But the gift, — the healer's special gift, — that superhuman 
 power of insight and will, — once lost had gone forever. 
 There remained a man, and a man's work, — the patient, 
 unceasing toil of the true doctor, laboring to achieve partial 
 results. Patching, he would have called it once, with scorn. 
 Now as he walked the murmuring streets of the human wilder- 
 ness, and read again the innumerable signs of the would-be- 
 healers before their doors, he was no longer scornful, no longer 
 intolerant of them and their incompetence, their pretentious 
 ignorance. They too "patched" with their limited power, 
 as he with his, for the most part honestly, doomed by those 
 human conditions that make men what they are, make life 
 what it is, — doomed to large futilities, to base compromises, 
 to inefficiency and waste. They suffered as he had suffered, 
 from the strife of warring wills. 
 
 Thus for the end of the great Ideal ! . . . And the broken 
 Idealist must learn to make man's eternal compromise with 
 his destiny, — content to be far less than a god, a little 
 more than animal, — and dream of an unshattered Ideal. 
 
IV 
 
 The director's office was on the second floor of the plain 
 brick building that housed the New Hospital ; the room looked 
 seaward over the roofs of lower structures, and on a day Uke 
 this in early spring, when the sun was warm and the soft 
 southerly breeze brought up to the city something of the 
 fragrance and the mystery of the sea, the director would often 
 interrupt his labors at his desk to walk to the open window 
 and gaze far away to the azure shore-line of the wide horizon. 
 Such days as these the primitive instinct for the open came 
 over him, — the call of the wilderness, — making his eyes 
 wander from the printed page, his feet move restlessly, his 
 mind chafe at the dull routine of accustomed thoughts. 
 
 This morning the director had been unusually nervous and 
 irritable in conference with his assistants, — sharp and per- 
 emptory. After six years of hard work, absorbing and taxing 
 all his energies, it was not strange that body and mind should 
 crave relief. He must take that vacation which he had long 
 denied himself, — a real vacation in the wilds, not a hasty 
 professional trip to Europe, as he had been in the custom of 
 doing latterly. Having made this resolve and settled with 
 himself some details of management during his absence, he 
 turned from the open window to tie himself down once more 
 by will to the hated desk, when he caught sight of a young 
 woman who had entered his office imobserved while his 
 
 426 
 
THE HEALER 427 
 
 back was towards the door. A single swift glance showed 
 that she was neither nurse nor prospective patient. She 
 was a mere girl, in spite of her long dress and her well rounded 
 figure, — not more than sixteen at the most. She was dressed 
 soberly enough as a girl of the richer classes would be. Her 
 plain face was full of a healthy vitality, which showed itself 
 as she smiled at the director timidly, yet with resolution. 
 
 "What is it?" Holden asked gently. 
 
 The girl's homely face reddened with embarrassment. 
 
 "Are you — the Director — Dr. Holden ?" 
 
 Holden nodded. 
 
 Again her timidity tied her tongue. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I — I want to be a doctor !" she burst forth with excite- 
 ment, and relieved by having made this announcement she 
 looked up again at him and smiled. 
 
 Holden laughed at the girlishness of the creature, — a 
 homely, awkward kitten of a woman ! 
 
 "We don't make doctors here," he rephed. "Won't you 
 sit down ? " He pointed to a chair on the other side of his 
 desk. 
 
 "I know!" Her face became puzzled once more, as if 
 conflicting thoughts were troubling her mind. "But you 
 are a very great doctor ! " 
 
 "How do you know that?" 
 
 "Dr. Percy said so !" 
 
 "Dr. Percy—" 
 
 "Dr. Farrold, I should say, but mama and every one 
 calls him just Dr. Percy." 
 
 "And who are you?" Holden demanded quickly. 
 
428 THE HEALER 
 
 The girl looked at him with clear, untroubled eyes, and 
 this time she did not blush. 
 
 " I am Dorothy — and you are my father," she announced 
 quite naturally. 
 
 For a few moments Holden made no reply, merely looking 
 at the girl, who withstood his glance firmly. 
 
 "I'm the younger, you know," she explained in her clear, 
 imchildish voice. "Nell is nearly two years older. She's 
 quite grown up and goes to parties." 
 
 "Are you still living in Lawndale?" her father asked. 
 
 " Yes — but we've come to the city for the winter. Nell 
 and mama wanted to see more people, and I had finished at 
 Miss Rabbit's — the school, you know ! " 
 
 "So," Holden resumed after a pause, "you want to become 
 a doctor ? " 
 
 "Yes !" the girl exclaimed with a quick return of enthu- 
 siasm, color again flushing her face. " Dr. Percy said I would 
 have to go to college first. But mama and Aunt Vera don't 
 believe in college for women. They're quite old-fashioned, 
 you know. Girls didn't go much to college when they were 
 young. . . . Nell is the same way. She liked Miss Rabbit's, 
 and I hated it. Just little snips of things to learn in books, 
 you Imow, — nothing interesting, — literature and art and 
 languages, all the ladylike things ! Such rot, don't you 
 think?" 
 
 They both laughed. The girl talked on freely and eagerly, 
 now that she was launched upon the real subject, — herself. 
 She assumed that her listener was as much interested in that 
 subject as she, and she confided to him with great clearness 
 and emphasis her positive views of life. 
 
THE HEALER 429 
 
 "I mean a real university," she observed, "not a woman's 
 college — that's only another sort of boarding school!" 
 and in defence of her scheme, she said casually, "You see 
 I shall never marry." 
 
 Holden smiled, and she explained hastily: — 
 
 "I'm not good looking enough ! Nell is very pretty, you 
 know, — just like mama, as like as two sisters every one 
 says. But I'm — the homely one ! " 
 
 She stopped precipitately, with a quizzical little smile, 
 as if she were on the point of carrying out her grandmother's 
 comparison of the younger girl to her father. In the family 
 it was always said, "And Dorothy is as plain as her father, 
 and that is saying a good deal !" Holden seemed to divine 
 the comparison, and again they laughed in perfect sympathy. 
 
 It was manifest that the young girl, in spite of her lovely 
 brown hair pushing out from her little hat, and the fresh- 
 ness and vitality of her youth, was homely ; she had the heavy 
 nose, the rugged and bony features, characteristic of her 
 father. 
 
 "Some homely women marry," the doctor ventured. 
 
 " Of course — but I don't care for boys. They never like 
 me either. Mama says I haven't the social instinct." 
 
 " Hum," the father commented. "That isn't always neces- 
 sary for happy marriage." 
 
 "But I mean to be a doctor !" 
 
 "So you've decided on medicine ?" 
 
 "Yes ! I've always wanted to be a doctor ever since I was 
 a Uttle thing." 
 
 She hesitated, then spoke out more shyly: "Of course 
 I knew about you ! How you saved mama's life, and became 
 
430 THE HEALER 
 
 a great doctor, and had a wonderful hospital up in the woods 
 for sick people. Aunt Vera told me all that and Dr. Percy, 
 too. And how it was burned up ! An awful shame, wasn't 
 it ? " and she added with suppressed excitement : " it must 
 have been wonderful ! The Spring — Dr. Percy showed me 
 photographs of it — and the sick people coming to you from 
 all over to get well. . . . How I wish I had been there ! " 
 
 "But you were !" laughed the father, on whose pale face 
 color was coming at this romantic version of his story. 
 
 "Oh! Just a baby, you know! I've tried and tried, 
 but I can't remember a thing about it — not a thing. It's all 
 Lawndale," she sighed. "And Miss Rabbit's !" 
 
 " So Dr. Percy told you about the Healing Spring ? " 
 
 "Yes, I make him tell me everything, — about the pretty 
 houses and the wonderful cures you had. . . . Why did 
 you leave when it burned down ? " 
 
 "Its time had passed," the doctor replied vaguely. "It 
 had done its work." 
 
 "Of course," she remarked contentedly, "if you hadn't 
 left you wouldn't be here now, — director of this hospital 
 and so famous." 
 
 "Famous!" 
 
 " I know all about it ! I read that article in the magazine 
 about the New Hospital and made Dr. Percy bring me things 
 you've published. But I can't understand them very well. 
 There are so many foreign names, and Miss Rabbit didn't 
 give us Latin ! " 
 
 "You must find the articles rather tough reading." 
 
 "I'll understand 'em some day," she aflBrmed positively. 
 "Aunt Vera said once to mama she always knew you would 
 
LtllL niljALiililt 431 
 
 be a famous man some day. Of course mama must have 
 known that too, when — " She stopped abruptly in confu- 
 sion. Holden leaned far back in his office chair and laughed 
 heartily at the irony of the situation. 
 
 "So when they made such a fuss about my going to a real 
 college and studying to become a doctor, I thought I'd just 
 come to see you about it !" 
 
 "That was quite right !" Holden replied promptly. 
 
 "Of course you know all about such things. Isn't there 
 some way I can study medicine without going to college ? " 
 
 "But you're too young." 
 
 "I'm sixteen!" 
 
 "You must go to college first and find out if you really 
 want — " 
 
 She shook her head impatiently at the suspicion of doubt 
 as to her resolve. 
 
 "But there's mama and Nell, and Aunt Vera and Grandma 
 and Dr. Percy, — not one of them will help me. They all 
 think that nice girls should go to parties and sit at home and 
 talk to young men and get married." 
 
 "I'll help you!" 
 
 "I knew you would," she said, lajang her arms confiden- 
 tially on the desk; "that's why I came here! ... I 
 wanted to see you, besides. I've meant to come and see 
 you some day — ever since I knew you were my father." 
 
 "Why didn't you look me up before ?" 
 
 The girl's eyes fell for a moment. 
 
 "Oh, you see there was mama — I didn't want to hurt 
 her feelings, of course. . . . But I'm older now, and I had 
 a real reason for coming." 
 
432 THE HEALEK 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Then they were both silent, as if the conversation were 
 becoming painful. Suddenly the girl looked up courageously 
 into her father's face. 
 
 "Won't you go and see mother about it?" 
 
 "I'll write her. . . . I'll see that you go to college and 
 get a chance to study medicine if you still want to when you 
 are ready." 
 
 "Thank you," she said simply, and after a moment added, 
 "I think it would be best to talk it over with mama." 
 
 "That is not necessary — your mother might not care to 
 see me," he said plainly. 
 
 "I think she would," the girl replied, meditatively. 
 "You see she's never married again — like — like other 
 women." 
 
 Holden nodded. 
 
 "Aunt Vera said we all ought to be proud of you !" 
 
 He laughed softly. 
 
 "Father !" the girl exclaimed bravely, looking up at him 
 with her honest young eyes. "I don't see why two people 
 can't be nice to each other — even if they don't — love each 
 other any more !" 
 
 "They should be." 
 
 "I don't see why they can't be friends — and — " 
 
 She seemed to be groping in her young soul for words to 
 express her sense of the folly and the injustice of the older 
 generation to their young. 
 
 "Some day, Dorothy, your mother will tell you all about 
 it—" 
 
 " No, I don't think I want to know about that," she said 
 
THE HEALER 433 
 
 positively. "It's your business and mother's. . . . But 
 all the same you are my father ! " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " It doesn't seem right that — the other should interfere 
 — with — " She stammered in distress. 
 
 "No matter — I understand!" Holden said quickly. 
 "You'd like me to see your mother and talk this all over with 
 her?" 
 
 She nodded her head emphatically, and he could see in 
 her dark eyes the tears brimming to the lids. 
 
 "Very well! When?" 
 
 "To-morrow afternoon, if you can — I'll come for you here, 
 may I?" 
 
 "Good!" 
 
 "I've taken such a lot of your time — I must go now." 
 
 "I'm very glad you came !" 
 
 The young girl rose and buttoned her little jacket about 
 her bust. When she stood up the impression of youth, 
 buoyancy, vitality that she gave was even more marked. 
 She looked out of the open window. 
 
 "What a jolly view you have up here!" She laughed 
 gayly. "You'll show me all about the place sometime ?" 
 
 "Whenever you like." 
 
 "That'll be great!" 
 
 She held out her large ungloved hand, — what her sister 
 called, "Dorothy's paw." Another blush came over her 
 eager homely face. "Good-by, father !" she said. "You've 
 been awfully kind to me. . . . To-morrow then ? " 
 
 And with a little fluttering smile on her large mouth, re- 
 minding Holden curiously of the mother whom she was so 
 
434 THE HEALER 
 
 much unlike, she slipped out of the door and was gone. He 
 sat down again at his desk, then rose and walked about the 
 office. 
 
 Youth with all its vigor, its hope, its passionate defence of 
 its own right to live as it would, had been here in the room 
 with him, and had left behind something of its health and 
 fragrance. And in the man who for eleven years had ab- 
 sorbed himself wholly in his work, living less and less any 
 personal life — for that had seemed completely ended for 
 him — strange f eeUngs Uke the call of springtime in the air 
 awoke. It was his daughter, — his own flesh, — who had 
 been with him in the room and spoke to him of his youth, — 
 love and hope and longing. And now it was her life that 
 must be considered, — the hfe of unspoiled youth ! 
 
 Already the turbulent journey was turning — the crest 
 of the hill had been mounted — and henceforth no matter 
 what his man's labor might effect, what good deed he might 
 accomplish, what fame acquire, it would always be the life 
 of the young that counted, — the next generation, crowding 
 impatiently on the road. . . . And this daughter of his 
 had her own ideas about her future, her work — she wanted 
 to be a doctor ! Proof that she was not completely the 
 replica of her mother, as he had predicted to Elport she 
 must be. . . . Of course he would go to see the mother, 
 however disagreeable it might be to him personally to enter 
 once more the closed doors of his passionate, defeated past. 
 
Helen Holden had become stouter during these years of 
 suburban inactivity. Yet she was still a pretty woman, with 
 vigor and much of the sap of life. Her hair was turning 
 prettily gray, especially over the right temple. . . . She 
 was sitting opposite her husband in the drawing-room of that 
 little house in which she had established her family for the 
 winter, so that they might be near their friends, especially 
 Vera Travers, who still lived on the neighboring avenue. 
 
 The meeting had been diflScult for her, after all these years 
 of separation, but having decided that it was best to yield 
 to her child's wish in the matter, she had accomplished it 
 bravely. She showed a complete self-possession, with a 
 touch of conscious good breeding in a painful situation. Her 
 manner revealed the mature complacency of the woman who 
 had met her heart's defeat courageously, maintained her 
 woman's dignity before the world, and brought up her daugh- 
 ters well according to her tradition. She was an unspoken 
 reproach to the errant male who had gone his way and left 
 her to go hers alone ! 
 
 On the table near Holden's seat was placed conspicuously 
 the number of a popular magazine that contained an eulo- 
 gistic illustrated account of the New Hospital, with the photo- 
 graph and a brief biography of its director, also a copy of 
 the "Journal of Abnormal Psychology" containing one of 
 
 435 
 
436 THE HEALER 
 
 Holden's contributions, and several foreign journals as well 
 in which the work of the Hospital had been commended. 
 At sight of these Holden had smiled with amusement. . . . 
 
 "About the girl," he was saying to his wife; "Dorothy 
 seems to have clear ideas what she wants to do with 
 herself." 
 
 " Dorothy always has had her own ideas ! " 
 
 "That's a good thing. . . . This is not a bad plan, I 
 think." 
 
 Helen made a little gesture of despair. 
 
 "She's always been so queer — " 
 
 "Like her father," Holden suggested. "Well, as the lan- 
 guajges and music didn't succeed with her, why not try 
 science ? " 
 
 "But a girl who doesn't have to earn her own living — " 
 
 "Many women are finding themselves nowadays that 
 way," Holden suggested. "It's a good thing: it balances 
 the other, sentimental influences of their lives." 
 
 "It's so unwomanly !" 
 
 Holden smiled, but held his tongue. . . . 
 
 So they sat there, talking like any two placid, middle-aged 
 folk — friends, who had had their grievances in the past with 
 each other, but to whom life had taught its hard lesson; 
 moreover as man and woman who had the solid ground of a 
 vital common interest between them. There was a light 
 step in the hall, and Mrs. Holden interrupted herself to say: — 
 
 " Is that you, Nell ? Come in here, please ! " 
 
 A tall, graceful young woman entered the little room and 
 hesitated at the sight of the stranger. The mother rising 
 from her chair said in her brisk, perfectly natural tone : — 
 
THE HEALER 437 
 
 " This is your father, Nell. . . . Will you please ring for 
 the tea, dear ? " 
 
 " How do you do ! " the girl said finally, in a formal manner, 
 not offering her hand. It was apparent enough that this 
 young woman had her views of things as well as her sister, 
 and they were not the same. 
 
 "Where have you beenj my dear?" her mother asked 
 quickly. 
 
 "Just around to Aunty's." 
 
 "And was Ned with you? I hoped you'd bring him 
 back!" 
 
 "Oh, did you, mother dear?" 
 
 The girl came over and put her arm caressingly about her 
 mother, glancing with slight hostility across the room at the 
 strange father. It might have been an affected pose, but it 
 was quite effective. The girl and her mother were beauti- 
 fully alike, — two versions of the same theme done at dif- 
 ferent moments of inspiration. The man, seeing them thus, 
 close together, had a troubled vision of his far-off youth. 
 The girl continued to eye him silently, perhaps resentfully, 
 while the mother made tea and chatted on. She seemed like 
 her mother in all respects, — very feminine and caressing, — 
 and, as he divined, obstinate and wholly limited in her view 
 of life. She must have been supple clay for the mother's 
 moulding hand ! The family imprint from grandmother and 
 mother was on her, and she was nearly ready to give it to 
 another generation of women. . . . 
 
 "And now about that college question," the doctor re- 
 marked as he replaced his tea-cup on the table. 
 
 "Dorothy going to college?" Nell asked with a disdainful 
 little laugh. 
 
438 THE HEALER 
 
 "Oh, I give her up !" the mother sighed. "You and she 
 will have to settle the matter by yourselves." 
 
 "She probably has some place in mind?" 
 
 "Wisconsin!" Nell remarked with scorn. "It's a co- 
 educational university — one of those western places," she 
 commented loftily, " where women wear men's pins and go to 
 parties without chaperons !" 
 
 She made a little face, at which Holden laughed. 
 
 "Many girls go to colleges these days," he observed. 
 
 "Not girls in the best society," Miss Holden corrected. 
 
 "I don't know much about the best society," her father 
 remarked, rising, "and I take it Dorothy doesn't either." 
 
 "There's Dorothy now," her sister said, "listening at the 
 door. Come in, Sis ! " 
 
 The younger girl, who had shyly disappeared after bringing 
 her father to the house, now entered the room, casting quick 
 glances from one parent to the other, as if to test the result 
 of a dubious experiment. Then with flashing eyes she ex- 
 claimed in a loud whisper : — 
 
 "Is it all right. Dad?" 
 
 "Dad !" her sister murmured, shocked. 
 
 "Come over to my office to-morrow," her father replied, 
 and shaking hands formally with the two others he left the 
 room, his younger daughter at his heels. 
 
 Nothing had been said about further possible relations, 
 the new footing of the family. But it seemed tacitly under- 
 stood that Dorothy at least was to have free communication 
 with her father, and for the present that was enough. Time, 
 the solvent of human passions, worked many miracles and 
 could be trusted to arrange this situation. 
 
iJlJii Ht^ALt^a 439 
 
 The doctor walking slowly up the avenue in the spring 
 twilight meditated on the scene he had just left, — the 
 mother and her two daughters. Helen had made a pleasant, 
 agreeable background for the girls, and it must have required 
 ingenuity to maintain a "decent social position," as the 
 Goodnows called it, on their income, until lately when the 
 lands in the far north had begun to pay. He had sent his 
 wife half his salary of late years, and they had had also the 
 income from that fund in Elport's hands. But three women 
 living in this city to-day, trying to preserve a conventional 
 social life — it took much money ! . . . 
 
 Doubtless the older girl would marry. The younger one 
 would make her own way as she pleased. She would not 
 need the background long. . . . With these thoughts Hol- 
 den reached the quiet hotel where he lived, as content with 
 the accidents of life as most men of his years and experience. 
 
VI 
 
 This stormy December day Helen Holden's little drawing- 
 room had a festive air. There were flowers on all the tables, 
 and in one corner a collection of small objects such as modern 
 society uses to recognize the announcement of an engagement 
 between two young people. A number of ladies were seated 
 cosily before the fire, for whom Helen was preparing to pour 
 coffee. . . . 
 
 "Two lumps, Vera? or is it three this winter?" the 
 mistress of the house asked, poising a pretty hand over the 
 sugar bowl. 
 
 "Three ! And another on the side !" To the chorus of 
 disapproval she protested, " I can't help it — I take cake, 
 too ! If I must be a fat old lady like my mother, why I must ! 
 I tell Gerald I've slaved over my figure for his sake long 
 enough, and now he will have to take me as the good Lord 
 meant me to be." 
 
 She laughed with a soft gurgle of content. Vera Travers 
 laughed more easily in her comfortable middle age than she 
 had laughed in her youth. She was quite plump and ma- 
 tronly, as indeed were all the others : life had treated them 
 indulgently, at least on the physical plane. 
 
 "Why must women live in such horror of flesh ! " exclaimed 
 Mrs. Percy Farrold, a young woman who was evidently still 
 struggling with her appetite. 
 
 " It's the men, of course !" Vera Travers retorted. "You're 
 
 440 
 
THE HEALER 441 
 
 still young enough, my dear, to captivate your husband with 
 your pretty figure. . . . You stand ten minutes after each 
 meal?" . . . 
 
 Chattering young voices and a burst of girlish laughter 
 floated upstairs from the floor below, where the engagement 
 luncheon was still in progress. 
 
 "They are having such a good time, bless their dear 
 hearts !" Helen Holden observed purringly. 
 
 "An engaged girl like your Nell is the loveliest thing on 
 earth," Nina Farrington sighed sentimentally. "How I 
 remember my own time !" 
 
 "Life is never so good again for a woman !" 
 
 "That's quite true !" the mother affirmed with conviction. 
 " I mean that Nell shall have all the happiness of it, — all the 
 little things that go with it, clothes and parties and a pretty 
 wedding. They mean so much to a woman — she remem- 
 bers it all her life !" 
 
 Coffee having been dispensed, she settled back in her chair, 
 and with a contented smile looked musingly at the fire. 
 Vera Travers, who alone of those present could remember 
 another engagement and marriage that had happened twenty 
 years before smiled slyly to herself. 
 
 "Nell is so charming — so perfectly unspoiled," the women 
 chanted in unison. " However could you keep anything as 
 nice and fresh as that girl is at eighteen ? And these days, 
 when the girls know all the horrors before they are out ! . . . 
 She is too good for any mere man !" 
 
 "She is sweet," the mother admitted. "But of course 
 Ned is not any mere man ! " 
 
 There was a pleasant laugh. 
 
442 TJtlli; tit^AhH^K 
 
 "He is a nice boy," Vera Travers remarked, "and very 
 clever in business they say, too!" 
 
 "Yes, he has had a remarkable success at the mills." 
 
 "Will they have to live up there in the country?" Mrs. 
 Farrold inquired. 
 
 " Only for a short time. The Senator thinks another year 
 will give Ned all the experience he needs, and then they will 
 come to the city to settle." 
 
 "A year — oh, that's nothing, just a long honeymoon," 
 some one observed. 
 
 "I shall miss her, of course," the mother said, "but Plantley 
 is only four hours away — she will be here much of the time, 
 of course." 
 
 "Helen, you do have luck!" Nina Farrington remarked 
 flatly. 
 
 "Sometimes. But this is Nell's good fortune more than 
 mine !" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know — a good son-in-law is a family 
 blessing." 
 
 The mother smiled. She knew quite well that she was 
 thoroughly envied by these other women with marriageable 
 daughters because her Nell had captured the Senator's only 
 son, — a wholly "nice" young man, unspoiled by dissipation 
 and with more than ordinary "expectations." From the 
 mothers' point of view the Senator's son was the ideal mar- 
 riageable male. And the Holdens with their small means 
 and inconspicuous social position had carried off one of 
 the best prizes in woman's great game. Naturally a little 
 envy was mixed with the sincere congratulations which 
 mother and daughter had received this day. . . . 
 
THE HEALER 443 
 
 "Such a pity that Dr. Holden could not be here," one of 
 the women observed. 
 
 "Yes, wasn't it provoking !" Mrs. Holden replied calmly. 
 
 "In Europe, isn't he?" 
 
 "Yes, they would give him that degree — " 
 
 "It's a great honor," Vera observed. 
 
 "Only two Americans have ever received it," Nina Far- 
 rington added coldly. 
 
 "He didn't seem to want it," Mrs. Holden remarked, 
 "and declared he wouldn't cross the ocean for a piece of 
 academic flummery like that. But Mr. Elport and the 
 other trustees persuaded him that he must go for the sake of 
 the Hospital. So he sailed last week. I wanted to put off 
 the announcement of the engagement, but he wouldn't hear 
 of it. . . . We had a cable from him this morning." 
 
 She reached over the table and handed the yellow slip to 
 Vera Travers, who read aloud, — " Congratulation — may 
 all that a woman's heart desires be yours. Father." 
 
 "Very pretty!" 
 
 Vera smiled, as she re-read the message, her lips murmuring 
 the words, — "All that a woman's heart desires ! " 
 
 Meanwhile little Mrs. Farrold was saying: — 
 
 "Your husband is such a distinguished man. . . . Percy 
 says that the Hospital is known all over the medical world 
 for the work it is doing." 
 
 " It's the fad — nervous diseases ! " Mrs. Farrington 
 pronounced. 
 
 "The doctor gives all the credit to the young men he has 
 with him. He says he is living off their work — talks of 
 resigning his position as director !" 
 
444 THE HEALER 
 
 " Oh ! " the women protested. 
 
 "Of course," Mrs. Farrington observed, "he could make 
 a great deal more money as a consultant, with his reputa- 
 tion." 
 
 "I don't believe he would practise if he resigned." . . . 
 
 The women fluttered for a time over other subjects, but 
 reverted always after a little to their children, especially to 
 Nell Holden. 
 
 "She is the perfect image of you, Mrs. Holden!" Mrs. 
 Jenks remarked, holding forth her tiny gilt cup for more 
 coffee. "I never saw such a complete likeness between 
 mother and daughter." 
 
 "Many people say so," the mother admitted. 
 
 Mrs. Goodnow, who had come feebly into the room and 
 was reading a novel with a gaudy cover over by the window, 
 looked up at this and let the book fall from her palsied hands. 
 
 " Helen was better looking at that age — much better. 
 She had a more delicate coloring, and she carried herself 
 better," she quavered. " I was always very particular about 
 that when she was a girl. But nowadays girls never think 
 how they stand — not that Nell isn't a pretty girl. She has 
 the Blake figure!" 
 
 As if she had delivered a final verdict, the old lady picked 
 up her novel with her trembling fingers. 
 
 " I'm sure I can't tell them apart on the street ! " Mrs. 
 Jenks laughed. "It must be the Blake figure." 
 
 "That's because you don't see my gray hair !" Mrs. Holden 
 observed, patting the roll of almost white hair which con- 
 cealed the scar above her temple. "How is Percy?" she 
 asked, turning to Mrs. Farrold. 
 
THE HEALER 445 
 
 " Growing terribly stout — he's gone South shooting, you 
 know." 
 
 "You spoil him, I'm afraid." 
 
 " Yes, I do. . . . He has such a good time being spoiled ! 
 It keeps men good-natured, don't you think?" . . . 
 
 The chattering voices that had been heard from time to 
 time now came nearer, and a number of young girls entered 
 the room filling it with liveliness and youth. Each mother 
 looked straightway at her daughter, with an expression of 
 parental affection mingled with shrewd criticism. Each one 
 knew thoroughly her offspring's "good points," her chances 
 in the woman's game, and each compared her own with the 
 tall, graceful blonde girl, who had carried off the prize. They 
 did not know what rebel ideas these little women might be 
 concealing, what revolts they must meet in their children. 
 They were "starting them properly" according to the con- 
 servative instincts of the sex, sure that life would justify 
 them in the end for what they were doing. 
 
 For a few minutes there was more chatter, and then the 
 company dispersed, Mrs. Percy Farrold taking a number of 
 the girls with her in her car to the theatre, and the others 
 soon going their respective ways. 
 
 Mrs. Holden waved a hand to the last guest departing in 
 the blustering storm, then turned to Vera Travers, who had 
 lingered. 
 
 " You're not going. Vera ? Now we can have a good talk ! " 
 
 The two women drew nearer the fire, and discussed their 
 friends. 
 
 "Percy married just the right woman for him," Vera 
 mused. 
 
446 THE HEALER 
 
 "She's rather ordinary, don't you think?" Helen, who had 
 always a proprietary air towards the little doctor, replied 
 coldly. 
 
 "Perhaps, but she's rich and easy-going, gives him the 
 opportunity to do what he likes." 
 
 "He's lost all interest in his profession!" 
 
 "No great loss to the profession, is it?" 
 
 "You never appreciated Dr. Percy!" . . . 
 
 "How Dorothy has grown," Vera remarked thoughtfully; 
 " and she's better looking than she was, I think. She's com- 
 ing to look more than ever like her father." 
 
 "Yes, she's not good looking." 
 
 "A strong face !" 
 
 "That's what every one says of a homely girl when they 
 want to be polite. She's hopelessly plain. Vera, and you 
 know it." 
 
 "She has beautiful eyes, like smouldering fires. ... I 
 always liked Dor, you know — such an original little 
 piece ! " 
 
 "You always liked her father," the mother retorted some- 
 what crisply. 
 
 "Yes, I did !" 
 
 "You should have married him !" 
 
 "No! I never would have married him, my dear — it 
 took courage to do that ! " 
 
 She laughed her low, gurgling laugh that combined the 
 qualities of good nature and comfortable worldliness. 
 
 "Dorothy grows more like him all the time," the mother 
 continued. "Always doing the unexpected thing, just as 
 she used to carry stray kittens to school in her bag, and con- 
 
THE HEALER 447 
 
 ceal dirty little alley children in the attic when we had any 
 one at dinner, — to feast them in the kitchen !" 
 
 "She graduates from that western university this spring, 
 she tells me, and is going to the medical school in the fall." 
 
 "Yes, she is perfectly determined, and her father encour- 
 ages her. She isn't likely to marry, so I leave her future to 
 him. . . . Her father is bringing her up like a boy." 
 
 "She must be a great interest for the doctor." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. . . . Nothing seems to interest him 
 much except his work at that hospital." 
 
 For a time there was silence between the two old friends, 
 and then Vera remarked with her intelligent smile: — 
 
 "After all, Nell, life has been pretty good to you !" 
 
 "Yes — things have come out better than might have been 
 expected." 
 
 She held out her pretty hands to the warm fire, a look of 
 placid contentment on her face, as of one who had made her 
 little struggle and was now reaping the rewards. 
 
 "You see," she resumed, "the Colonel wasn't so foolish, 
 after all, in putting mother's money in those cut-over lands 
 up north. They're paying very well now. ... Of course 
 the doctor could make anything he chose to, if he did as 
 Farrington and Jenks do. But he lets the younger men get 
 all the plums. . . . However, Dorothy won't need much, 
 probably, and Nell is provided for now." 
 
 Thus like an able general she reviewed her physical situar 
 tion and found it favorable. 
 
 "Shall you go abroad again this spring. Vera?" 
 
 "Yes," her friend replied lazily. "It's best for Gerald. 
 He sees something of his family when he is over there !" 
 
448 THE HEALER 
 
 "You've always spoiled him so, Vera !" 
 
 " I take care of him, dear man ! I give him an allowance 
 for bridge, limit his cigars, and make him swear off cocktails 
 every three months. But I couldn't make him work. The 
 experiments were too expensive !" 
 
 They laughed. 
 
 "Perhaps I began wrong, but I don't think so. . . . I've 
 always paid all the bills, — even his clubs, — decided what we 
 should do summers, selected the schools for the boys and 
 girls, engaged the governesses and the tutors, and the chauf- 
 feurs." 
 
 "You did spoil him." 
 
 "But he's so comfortable and ornamental, Nell ! . . . I 
 didn't marry him to become famous. He gave the children 
 a good name, — much better than mine. He is a good father 
 when he remembers he has children. He has no vices, — 
 big ones at least, — or none that he lets me know anything 
 about. . . . Indeed, he's quite a perfect husband, if he 
 wouldn't get so sleepy evenings !" 
 
 Thus the practical lady summed her experience of matri- 
 mony. She had entered it with clear eyes, and she had got 
 from it what she had expected and what she judged was best 
 worth while for her, — some healthy children, a good social 
 position, and a handsome, amiable, if somewhat stupid com- 
 panion. She had supplied the abundant means necessary 
 for the enterprise, and also the energy, and the inteUigence. 
 
 "At any rate," she resumed, as if completing a long line of 
 meditation, "it is better than romance!" 
 
 Her soft eyes rested upon her friend's face. 
 
 "Yes," the other assented quickly, "Anything is better 
 
THE HEALER 449 
 
 than too much romance ! I'm so glad Nell's young man is 
 of the soUd sort. They are both quite sensible over life." 
 
 "Romance means a few months of delirium, then agony, 
 then disgust — for us women!" 
 
 "I wonder if there ever was a perfect marriage — like those 
 the novelists describe ? " 
 
 "I'm sure not," Vera laughed back promptly. "No more 
 than perfect cooks; you find one who can make lovely 
 pastry, but burns the roast, and another who is perfect on 
 plain things, but useless for frills. . . . Perfections exist 
 only in the land of nod, along with great Ideals and all that ! " 
 
 "One must compromise." 
 
 "You go in for high romance, and it comes down to three 
 meals a day or divorce. " 
 
 "Anything is better than that !" 
 
 Vera looked at her friend with curiosity. 
 
 "Tell me, Nell," she said with the air of one who knew all 
 the other's intimate secrets, "did you ever hear anything more 
 about that woman at the Spring?" 
 
 Mrs. Holden shook her head. 
 
 "Has the doctor ever seen her again?" 
 
 "I don't believe he'd know her if he met her on the street ! 
 . . . Men are so queer !" 
 
 "Are you sure?" 
 
 Mrs. Holden nodded confidently. 
 
 "He's too much absorbed in his work ever to think of a 
 woman these days. . . . Men outUve that, you know, my 
 dear, in time." 
 
 "Sometimes it breaks out later on like a smouldering fire." 
 
 "Second childhood ? . . . Well, I don't worry now," the 
 2q 
 
450 THE HEALER 
 
 wife replied positively. "Everythiag comes out right if you 
 only wait !" 
 
 "You are a wise woman, my little Nellie," Vera laughed 
 affectionately. 
 
 "Women have to be wise — and wait, if they aren't to be 
 jammed to the wall in life," Helen responded with assurance, 
 and she continued unexpectedly with a further generaUza- 
 tion of her life experience: "Men really don't know what 
 they want. They think they do when they marry us, but it 
 is our business to show them. I don't mean by lecturing, or 
 managing, but by making them live as we know they should 
 hve. We know what is best for ourselves and for our chil- 
 dren — and in the end men come to want that too, no matter 
 how wild they may be at first. They know that we are right ! 
 Women are the force that keeps society together, makes 
 civilized living possible." 
 
 "Directors of civilization, as that suffrage woman said," 
 Vera mocked. 
 
 "Civilization itself," Helen corrected, rearranging the 
 roses in the nearest vase. "Men don't understand women 
 — good women, I mean." 
 
 "True ! But we hke the songs they make about us in our 
 youth!" 
 
 "Of course — but that isn't real life." 
 
 "Well," exclaimed the other, rising with reluctance from 
 her comfortable seat before the fire, "Nellie, you have been 
 wonderful ! . . . You've tamed your Wild One, as I never 
 thought you could." 
 
 "He comes for dinner every Sunday — and twice during 
 the week to tea. We are very good friends." 
 
THE HEALER 451 
 
 "For dinner on Sundays and twice a week for tea," Vera 
 repeated, drawing on her gloves. "Nellie, you are wonder- 
 ful !.. . But what are you going to do later on ? " 
 
 "Oh, I never look ahead far. ... It will arrange itself 
 somehow, no doubt. . . . You see I shall be busy with Nell 
 and her affairs. . . . And if mother is well enough we may 
 go abroad another summer." 
 
 "I must go. . . . Just see how it is storming ! . . . 
 You'll send me Dorothy for Saturday ? So sorry I haven't 
 a seat for you, dear, but this is for the girls ! " 
 
 Arm in arm the two friends left the cosey drawing-room. 
 
 Wild dreams are beautiful, and lovers' songs, and worship ; 
 but a good fireside, a secure place in the world for themselves 
 and their children, — that is the highest wisdom of women, 
 — so the sizzling log on the hearth in the comfortable draw- 
 ing-room seemed to proclaim. 
 
VII 
 
 Nevektheless, it did not end as the wife thought. . . . 
 
 Every morning for many years the distinguished director 
 of the New Hospital had appeared at his office at the same 
 early hour before most busy men had left their breakfast 
 tables. The nurses and the young doctors attached to the 
 hospital might have set their watches by the appearance on 
 the brow of the little hill at the head of the street of a tall, 
 slightly bent, thin figure that swung around the corner from 
 the avenue and with a characteristically impatient stride 
 came rapidly down the block, raising the head once before 
 entering the doors of the hospital building to look far out 
 seawards. Latterly the stride had become less swift, and the 
 head was rarely raised. The doctor walked mechanically, 
 his head bent in pursuit of some inner argument. 
 
 On a certain clear October morning when the air was 
 thrilling to young blood, exciting feats of duty as well as er- 
 rant impulses, the director appeared on the corner at the 
 accustomed hour. But the brisk autumn morning did not 
 quicken his leisurely pace. There had been a time when the 
 autiunn wine in the air, like that of to-day, would have been 
 more potent than the soft spring invitation. He would have 
 raised his eyes above the city buildings to the blue sky and 
 seen that other land far away in the wilderness of the north 
 with its silent lakes, dark winding streams, and wooded hill- 
 sides, and his heart woi^ld have filled with wistful longing. 
 
 452 
 
THE HEALER 453 
 
 For to him who has lived in the wilderness this is the virile 
 time of the year, with its clean sweeping winds, its purple 
 color, the soft chant of insects in the underbrush, and the 
 tender melancholy of the forests. At the turn of the year 
 the mystery of the wilderness is felt most — change and 
 death and the unknown. . . . But to-day it seemed that 
 the Wild One would never again see the wilderness of his 
 youth ! 
 
 Another restlessness was upon him this morning, dragging 
 his feet, — the restlessness of age. He had labored faithfully 
 through the dust and heat of middle life, doing his best to 
 clear the road for others. He had taught younger men, 
 shown them how to become real healers of men. They were 
 now doing the work that he had once done, — making the 
 discoveries, making the cures. . . . Latterly he had talked 
 of giving up his post of director. His work had been done, 
 he said to himself. He had been path-maker, organizer, 
 trainer, teacher — everything but the healer. The young 
 men who had learned their art from him were doing the deeds 
 he had hoped once to do. To them should be all the fame 
 and the reward. 
 
 For in the clear light of his life's autumn he could see the 
 windings of the backward road. That ideal of a great phal- 
 anstery of healing that he had dreamed of in his youth, that 
 he had attempted to create in the wilderness by the Healing 
 Spring, was partially fulfilled in this modern city institution 
 for the care of nervous diseases. He saw himself without 
 shadow. Once he might have been the great healer men 
 seek in their weakness, if he had given himself sternly and 
 fully, and rejected all illusions. He had yielded first to the 
 
454 THE HEALER 
 
 illusion of young love, with its wild, impossible dream, then 
 to the grosser illusions of manhood, — lust, and pride, and 
 greed. Then had come the scourge of fire and wiped his 
 efforts from the earth, casting him out into the wilderness of 
 men. And there he had become good citizen, faithful worker, 
 builder of this new temple of healing, — with glimpses of 
 the inner shrine. Others must come, stronger than he, to 
 build on his foundation, — to become real healers of men. 
 For youth has always this promise of bearing forward the 
 flaming torch into the dark, if it does not falter, does not 
 sell itself basely. 
 
 Yes ! It was all clear, the devious winding road. And 
 now it was time that he should step aside, give place to that 
 youth, ever new, in whom the hope of the world must always 
 lie. His doctor girl had gone forth by herself to a hospital 
 in a small western town, and the older daughter had a girl 
 child of her own, — absorbing care for the grandmother. 
 The next generation was already in the middle of the stage, 
 carrying on the struggle. . . . 
 
 Thus in unseeing meditation the doctor reached the wide 
 door of the hospital, where his feet paused instinctively. A 
 number of young men were loitering about the entrance as 
 usual; they looked at their distinguished chief with the 
 curious, half shy eyes of youth and made way for him. 
 But he did not enter the building. A young man whom 
 the doctor knew well came forward to speak to him. The 
 old man bent his gray head to listen and laid a shrunken, 
 trembling hand upon the young man's shoulder. A gentle 
 smile broke over his sombre face, as if the mere touch of 
 youth had dispelled the sadness of age. Years seemed to 
 
THE HEALER 455 
 
 drop from the bent figure, — the years of struggle and de- 
 feat, the years of achievement and compromise, as once 
 more the feeling of youth stole over him, filling him with 
 a strange exaltation. Suddenly he exclaimed : — 
 
 " Come with me, my boy ! " 
 
 Those standing by, curiously watching the two, saw the 
 old man retrace his steps up the street in the clear October 
 sunlight, leaning upon the young man, and disappear around 
 the comer. Thus he turned his back forever upon the hos- 
 pital. 
 
 As the two mounted the street, jostled in the stream of 
 hurrjnng youth intent upon its own desires, the old man 
 was murmuring lightly into the ear of his companion : — 
 
 " My boy, I will take you to my home, up into the wil- 
 derness far to the north, among the lakes and the great 
 forests and the silent hills ! " 
 
 With his dreamy eyes he beheld already, — not the city 
 street with its crowded faces and huddled buildings, — but 
 the dark forest, the gleaming Lake, the snowy mountain 
 peak in the wilderness of his youth. . . . 
 
 " And I will teach you the great secret," he said to the 
 yoimg man, — " the secret of the healer, the secret of all 
 true manhood. . . . The secret," he whispered with a 
 wistful smile, "we often miss upon the way. . . . Cour- 
 age ! The will to give all ! . . . That is the secret." 
 
 THE END 
 
"IPHE following pages contain advertisements of 
 a few of the Macmilkn Novels. 
 
]V[R. ROBERT HERRICK'S NOVELS 
 
 Together CUth, gUt tops, each, $i.jo 
 
 " Scarce a page but is tense and strong." — Record-Herald. 
 "A masterpiece of keen vision and vivid depiction." — Mail. 
 "An absorbing story . . . likely to make a sensation." — New York 
 Evening Post. 
 
 " A book of the first magnitude, that handles a momentous theme boldly, 
 wisely, sympathetically, and with insight." — TAe Forum. 
 
 A Life for a Life 
 
 " A serious attempt to treat a big living question in a new way." — Record- 
 Herald. 
 
 The Gospel of Freedom 
 
 " A novel that may be truly called the greatest study of social life that has 
 ever been contributed to American fiction." — Chicago Inter- Ocean. 
 
 The Web of Life 
 
 " It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American life, 
 and uses them to strengthen a web of fiction, which is most artistically 
 wrought out." — Buffalo Express. 
 
 The Common Lot 
 
 Is a strong, virile picture of modern business life, with all its temptations 
 
 to " graft " and its fight for privilege. 
 
 " A novel which it would be difficult to overpraise." — Philadelphia Ledger. 
 
 " It is by long odds the greatest novel of the autumn." — The New- York 
 
 American. 
 
 The Real World 
 
 " Unusually satisfying . . . The hero steadily approaches the dividing 
 line between safety and ruin and you are kept in agitated suspense until 
 the dramatic climax. A number of powerful scenes add color and force- 
 fiilness to a story in the main eminently satisfactory." — Record-Herald, 
 Chicago. 
 
 The Memoirs of an American Citizen 
 
 With about SO illustrations by F. B. Masters 
 
 "Mr. Herrick's book is a book among many, and he comes nearer to re- 
 flecting a certain kind of recognizable, contemporaneous American spirit 
 than anybody has yet done." — New York Times. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 FubliBheTg 64-66 Tifth Avenue New York 
 
Imporiani Neiv Fiction by Leading cAutfiors 
 
 The Man in the Shadow 
 
 By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD, author of "Jim Hands." 
 
 Decorated doth, izmo, illustrated, $i.3j net 
 Some of the incidents described are full of the well-turned humor for 
 which Mr. Child is so well known; others where life is looked at seri- 
 ously, are grave, but all are human to the core. 
 
 John Temple: Merchant Adventurer, Oanvict and 
 Conquistador 
 
 By RALPH DURAND. Illustrated by William Sewell. 
 
 Clotk, izmo, $/.3j tut 
 Every schoolboy has heard tales as true as they are wonderful of the 
 Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, but comparatively few boys or 
 men — in the absence of a Prescott — know that a tale almost as wonder- 
 ful and romantic, and every bit as true, might be written of the unsuc- 
 cessful attempt made by Francisco Barreto to establish a great Portuguese 
 Empire in South Africa. By the aid of relics and traditions of this period, 
 still extant in the Zambesi Valley, and from the historical records, Mr. 
 Durand has here tried to rescue this story from oblivion. He has used 
 the novel as his medium because the tale, though true, seemed too 
 romantic for sober history. 
 
 Puppets 
 
 By GEORGE FORBES. Clotk, izmo, %i.2S net 
 
 On the surface this is a story; but that is not the principal thing. 
 Through the pleasant, humorous, kindly talk of the principal character is 
 developed a philosophy of life so simple that it will appeal to every one 
 who thinks at all, yet so comprehensive that it removes many of the 
 difficulties the average person has in trying to conceive what life really is. 
 
 The Jugglers 
 
 By MOLLY ELLIOTT SEA WELL, author of " The Ladies' BatUe," etc. 
 Decorated cloth, iznw, illustrated, $i.oo net 
 The varied experiences of a travelling band of singers and dancers just 
 before and during the time of the Franco-Prussian War is the theme of 
 this colorful story. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 FttblisheTB 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 
 
The Virginian 
 
 By OWEN WISTER, author of "Lady Baltimore," "Members of the 
 Family," etc. New edition with new illustrations by Charles M. 
 Russell, and drawings of Western scenes by Frederic Remington. 
 
 Decorated cloth, ismo, $i.SO net 
 Also a limited large paper edition, on Japanese vellum. 
 
 Cloth, crown 8vo, $S-oo net 
 Since the publication of The Virginian ten years ago, that novel has 
 been generally recognized as the finest Western story ever written. In 
 preparing the new edition it seemed appropriate to associate with Mr. 
 Wister that artist who has done the most to present pictorially the West 
 as it is — Charles M. Russell. Added to the new pictures which Mr. 
 Russell has made is an accompaniment of Western drawings by Frederic 
 Remington, 
 
 South Sea Tales 
 
 By JACK LONDON. Illustrated, decorated cloth, i2mo, $i.2J net 
 
 Jack London's stories of the South Seas have a sense of reality about 
 them which, even if the author were obscure and his goings and comings 
 unknown, would prove that he had been on the ground and had himself 
 taken part in the combats, physical and mental, which he describes. 
 The present volume is a collection of vivid tales, which, both in their 
 subject-matter and in their setting, give the author free hand. 
 
 The Believing Years 
 
 By EDMUND LESTER PEARSON 
 
 Decorated cloth, i2mo, $i.2j net 
 
 This story of the doings of a group of country boys shows that along 
 with his wonderful understanding of the boy nature, the author has, what 
 is just as important, a vivid memory of his own boyhood. Without such 
 a memory he could never write as he does of the charmed circle of youth, 
 into which no man may enter, no matter how well he may appreciate the 
 faiths and superstitions of its members. The book has humor and inci- 
 dent, but its charm resides in the startling fidelity with which it recalls 
 the very spirit of youth — of " the believing years. " 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Pul)lisherB 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
IMPORTANT RECENT FICTION 
 
 JACK LONDON'S New Novel 
 
 Adventure By the author of " Burning Daylight." Cloth, $1.50 
 
 " Vividly imaginative and exciting, with a novel form of love interest in 
 unusual surroundings." 
 
 Mrs. PRYOR'S New Novel 
 
 The Colonel's Story 
 
 By the author of "My Day" etc. Cloth, $1.20 net; by mail, ^1.30 
 
 "Full of that fascinating charm inseparable from life in the true 'old 
 South ' as Mrs. Pryor reproduces it with unrivaled comprehension." 
 
 F. MARION CRAWFORD'S 
 
 Wandering Ghosts ciotk, ismo, Si.3j net; by mau, Si.sj 
 
 "No recent writer of fiction has so swayed his readers at will as Mr. 
 Crawford ; whereof this poignant volume is ample proof," 
 
 GUSTAF FRENSSEN'S 
 
 Klaus Hinrich Baas cioth,$i.so 
 
 " A big, strong, meaty novel, rich in mature thought, and with a life-size 
 portrait of a real man in it." 
 
 HAMILTON DRUMMOND'S Lively Novel 
 
 The Justice of the King Cloth, Si.20 net; by mail, $1.30 
 
 " Eminently readable, terse, and dramatic." — JVew York World. 
 " Many sensations and much mystery end delightfully." — Boston Times. 
 
 Mrs. HUBERT BARCLAY'S New Novel 
 
 Trevor Lordship Cloth, $1.20 net; by mail, $1.30 
 
 " A delight to those sensitive to the finer emotions, the hidden beauties 
 of life." 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York