But now his customary, soothing smile was absent, the small, worn case that contained the glittering syringe and minute bottles filled with white or vivid yellow pellets was not to be seen. "Clare here's gone and got herself real miserable," he stated, rising and beckoning Gordon to follow him to the porch. "She's bad," he pronounced outside; "that pain's got the best of her, and it's getting the best of me. She ought to be cut, but she's so weak, it's gone so long, that I'm kind of slow about opening her. And the truth is, Gordon, if I was successful she wouldn't have a chance of getting well here--it'll take expert nursing, awful nice food; and then, at the shortest, she would be in bed a couple of months. She ought to go to the hospital in Stenton. That's the real truth. I'm telling you the facts, Gordon; we can't handle her here, she'd die on us." Gordon only half comprehended the other's words--Clare dangerously ill ... a question of dying, hospitals. She had suffered for so long that, without losing his sympathy for her, it had seemed to him her inevitable condition. It had fallen naturally upon him to care for her, guard her against damp, prevent her from lifting objects beyond her strength. These continuous, small attentions held an important place in his existence--he thought about her in a mind devoted substantially to himself, and it brought him a glow of contentment, a pleasant feeling of ministration and importance. It had not occurred to him that Clare might grow worse, that she might, in fact, die. The idea filled him with sudden dismay. His heart contracted with a sharp hurt. "The hospital," he echoed dully, "Stenton." "By rights," the doctor iterated; "of course we'll do what we can here, she might last for a couple of years more without cutting; and then, again, her heart might just quit. Still--" "What would the hospital cost?" Gordon asked, almost unaware of having pronounced the words. "It'd be dear--two hundred and some dollars anyway, and the money on the nail. The nursing would count up; then there would be something for operating, if it was only a little ... a lot of things you don't allow for would turn up." Two hundred and more dollars! Gordon had a fleeting vision, against the empurpling banks, the dark, sliding water, and the mountainous wall capped with dissolving gold beyond, of a room filled with the hot glow of kerosene lamps; he saw Jake's twitching, murderous countenance above him.... Two hundred dollars! He had two hundred and eighty dollars in his pocket. He had another vision--of Simmons; it was two hundred and fifty dollars that the latter wanted, must have, to-morrow. But Simmons swiftly faded before Clare's need, the pressure of sickness. "She couldn't go down in the stage," he muttered, "the shaking would kill her before ever she got there." "I'll drive her to Stenton, Gordon," the doctor volunteered, "if you've got the money handy." "I've got her," Gordon Makimmon declared grimly.