"He was as merry as a cricket," says the doctor, "when I bade him good-bye." * * * * * About twelve hours on the way to Conch, where the man lay dying of hemorrhage--a two days' journey--the doctor fell in with a dog-train bearing the mail. And the mail-man had a letter--a hasty summons to a man in great pain some sixty miles in another direction. It was impossible to respond. "That call," says the doctor, sadly, "owing to sheer impossibility, was not answered." It was haste away to Conch, over the ice and snow--for the most of the time on the ice of the sea--in order that the man who lay dying there might be succoured. But there was another interruption. When the dog-train reached the coast, there was a man waiting to intercept it: the news of the doctor's probable coming had spread. "I've a fresh team o' dogs," sir, said he, "t' take you t' the island. There's a man there, an' he's wonderful sick." Would the doctor go? Yes--he would go! But he had no sooner reached that point of the mainland whence he was bound across a fine stretch of ice to the island than he was again intercepted. It was a young man, this time, whose mother lay ill, with no other Protestant family living within fifty miles. Would the doctor help her? Yes--the doctor would; and did. And when he was about to be on his way again---- "Could you bear word," said the woman, "t' Mister Elliot t' come bury my boy? He said he'd come, sir; but now my little lad has been lying dead, here, since January." It was then early in March. Mr. Elliot was a Protestant fisherman who was accustomed to bury the Protestant dead of that district. Yes--the doctor would bear word to him. Having promised this, he set out to visit the sick man on the island; for whom, also, he did what he could. * * * * * Off again towards Conch--now with fresh teams, which had been provided by the friends of the man who lay there dying. And by the way a man brought his little son for examination and treatment--"a lad of three years," says the doctor; "a bright, healthy, embryo fisherman, light-haired and blue-eyed, a veritable celt." "And what's the matter with him?" was the physician's question. "He've a club foot, sir," was the answer. And so it turned out: the lad had a club foot. He was fond of telling his mother that he had a right foot and a wrong one. "The wrong one, mama," said he, "is no good." He was to be a cripple for life--utterly incapacitated: the fishing does not admit of club feet. But the doctor made arrangements for the child's transportation to the St. Anthony hospital, where he could, without doubt be cured; and then hurried on. * * * * *