Evans stroked his bushy beard wisely. "Do about it?" he repeated, as he went back to his chair, leaving the patient to button her dress with stiff, fumbling fingers. "I mought put you on a course of my blood purifier and wait developments, and, Sister Hemingway, if I was like the regular run of doctors, with their own discoveries on the market, I’d do it in the interest of science, but I’m not going to take the resk on my shoulders. A man who gives domestic remedies like mine is on safe ground when he’s treating ordinary diseases, but I reckon a medical board would decide that this was a case for a good, steady knife. Now, I reckon you’d better get on the train and take a run down to Atlanta and put yourself under Dr. Putnam, who is noted far and wide as the best cancer expert in the land." "Then—then that’s what it is?" faltered Mrs. Hemingway. "Oh yes, that’s what you’ve got, all right enough," said Evans, "and the thing now is to uproot it." "How—how much would it be likely to cost?" the widow asked, her troubled glance on Virginia’s horror-stricken face. "That depends," mused Evans. "I’ve sent Putnam a number of cases, and he would, I think, make you a special widow-rate, being as you and me live so nigh each other. At a rough guess, I’d say that everything—board and room and nurse, treatment, medicines, and attention—would set you back a hundred dollars." "But where am I to get that much money?" Jane said, despondently. "Well, thar you have me," Evans laughed. "I reckon you know your resources better than anybody else, but you’ll have to rake it up some way. You ain’t ready to die yet. Callihan has a mortgage on your land, hain’t he?" "Yes, and on my crop not yet gathered," Jane sighed; "he even included every old hoe and axe and piece of harness, and the cow and calf, and every chair and knife and fork and cracked plate in the house." "Well," and Evans rose and reached for his hat, "as I say, you’ll have to get up the money; it will be the best investment you could make." When he had left, Virginia, horror-stricken, sat staring at her mother, a terrible fear in her face and eyes. "Then it really _is_ a cancer?" she gasped. "Yes, I was afraid it was all along," said Jane. "You see, the peddler said so plainly, and he told Ann Boyd about it. Virginia, she didn’t know I knew how bad it was, for she hinted at some awful end that was to overtake me, as if it would be news to me. Daughter, I’m going to try my level best to throw this thing off. I always had a fear of death. My mother had before me; she was a Christian woman, and was prepared, if anybody was, and yet she died in agony. She laid in bed and begged for help with her last breath. But my case is worse than hers, for my one foe in this life is watching over me like a hawk. Oh, I can’t stand it! You must help me study up some way to raise that money. If it was in sight, I’d feel better. Doctors can do wonders these days, and I’ll go to that big one if I possibly can."