"Watch her close," he said, as he rolled back the child's sleeve. "I'm going to give you an extra point, and if this doesn't work by the seventh or eighth day you must do the job over again." With the point of his knife he began to work gently on baby Isobel's tender pink skin. He had expected that she would cry. But she was not frightened, and her big blue eyes followed his movements wonderingly. At last it began to hurt, and her lips quivered. But she made no sound, and as tears welled into her eyes Billy dropped his knife and caught her up close to his breast. "God bless your dear little heart," he cried, smothering his face in her silken curls. "You've been hurt so much, an' you've froze, an' you've starved, an' you ain't never said a word about it since that day up at Fullerton! Little sweetheart--" McTabb heard him whispering things, and little Isobel's arms crept tightly about his neck. After a little Billy held her out to him again, and a part of what Rookie had seen in his face was gone. "It won't hurt any more," he said, as he rubbed the vaccine point over the red spot on her arm. "You don't want to be sick, do you? And that 'll keep you from being sick. There--" He wound a strip of the cotton about her arm, tied it, and gave part of what remained to McTabb. Then he took her in his arms again and kissed her warm face and her soft curls, and after that bundled her in furs and put her on the sledge. Rookie was straightening out the dogs when, like a thief, he clipped off one of the curls with his knife. Isobel laughed gleefully when she saw the curl between his fingers. Before McTabb had turned it was in his pocket. "I won't see her again-- soon," MacVeigh said; and he tried to keep a thickness out of his voice. "That is, I-- I won't see her to-- to handle her. I'll come over now and then an' look at her from the edge of the woods. You bring 'er out, Rookie, an' don't you dare to let her know I'm out there. She wouldn't know what it meant if I didn't come to her."