This boy----? If he had had time or money! Then suddenly he smiled. The thought of Ned Blackborough's hidden hundred pounds came to him as it had come more than once during the last few months. Here was a case for it, only unfortunately he had not the time for private work. Still it was odd what a backing that hundred pounds had been to all sorts of day-dreams. Why it should be so, was a psychological problem; since after all, it was but a paltry sum, and, in all probability, it no longer existed for him; for there had been distinct greed on at least two of the faces which had watched its concealment. It had, no doubt, been appropriated long ago. So the boy must go out, comfortably fitted with regulation crutches, to live, possibly, two or three years at the outside. And yet---- He bent regretfully, tracing the twist of the body beneath the bed-clothes, then looked up at the lingering of a passing footstep. "Good evening, Mrs. Tressilian. I beg your pardon, Nurse Helen--I am always forgetting." "Because you will not remember," she replied with a smile. Then her eyes grew soft; she bent over the bed in her turn; "Can nothing really be done for him, doctor? He is so very patient." There was something about this woman, Peter Ramsay felt, which took him away, as it were, into a desert place apart with nothing in it save himself, truth, and a listener. He had felt it from the moment he had first seen her; and he had told her the truth even then. It was another curious psycho-physiological problem which evaded dissection and analysis; so he had evaded her, ever since--carrying out her promise to herself--she had appeared as a nurse in the hospital now nearly five months ago. But the spell remained. "Nothing," he replied, half-speaking to himself, and following up his own train of thought; "Nothing at least that will be done--and it would be but an off chance anyhow." She caught him up swiftly. "Then there is a chance?" Peter Ramsay's face became a study in cynical reserve; he turned away. "My dear lady," he said, "haven't you been a nurse long enough to know a doctor's convenient formula, 'While there's life, there's hope.'" To his annoyance as he moved on to the door, she moved also. "I am off duty," she remarked, as if she had not appreciated his slamming of the door in her face, "so it is no breach of rules to tell you that I have had a letter from Ned Blackborough. He is coming back from the Mountains of the Moon--that was about his last address, I believe--but his arm is still troublesome. I should like to show you what he says." They were in the vestibule now, and Dr. Ramsay paused. He rather admired her pertinacity, and matched her coolness with his own. "Certainly. May I come in now--or stay! You will want to go out, I expect. Will you look in at my diggings after dinner? I might be able to give you a cup of coffee, if you will?" "I have no doubt the matron will allow me," she laughed. "Good-bye for the present, Dr. Ramsay."