Three weeks before, Ruth, her mother, and ever-apprehensive Aunt Melissa had come from the heat of coastal Georgia to the invigorating coolness of the Southern Appalachians. They had come to Point View several weeks later than usual this year, as spring was tardy and the hot days at home had been few. Ruth had been most miserable for weeks before they left home, but had stood the trip well, and Judge Rivers had received an encouraging, indeed a hopeful report from the invalid. But a few days later a letter telling of another of Ruth's attacks was followed immediately by an urgent, distressed telegram which caused him to adjourn court and hasten to his family. For many years Dr. Harkins had driven through the mountains eight starving months, serving and saving the poorly housed and often destitute mountaineers. The tourist flood from the burning, summer lowlands to the mountains' refreshment gave him his living. Dr. Harkins was as truly a missionary as though he were on the pay-roll of a denominational society. He had always helped, or the mountains had helped, or something had helped Ruth before, but this time nothing helped. The doctor had already called a neighboring physician; they were both perplexed, and each feared to say the word which, in their minds, spelled her doom. For nearly three days Ruth had been delirious, this gentle, sensible, reserved girl, tossing and calling out. A few times she had even screamed, and her mother always said that she had been "too fine a baby to even cry out loud." For five nights there had been no sleep save an unnatural stupor produced by medicine. Mother and nurse had taxed their strength keeping her in bed during the paroxysms of her suffering, which, hour by hour, seemed to grow in intensity and to defy the ever-increasing doses of quieting drugs. She had recognized no one for days. Even her mother's voice brought back no moment of natural response. "It must be meningitis," Dr. Harkins finally said, and the other doctor nodded in agreement. And Aunt Melissa informed the neighbors that it was "meningitis" and that her darling Ruth could last but a few days. The mother's anxiety reiterated "meningitis," and good, levelheaded Martha King, the nurse, knew that the three cases of meningitis which she had nursed had suffered the same way before they died. When Judge Rivers came, he spent but one minute in the sick-room. It was days before he dared reenter. Ruth did not know him. For the first time in her twenty-seven years, she had failed to respond happily to his hearty, rich-voiced love-greeting. The Judge's small fortune had grown slowly. Only that year had the mortgage been finally lifted on their comfortable Georgia home. But in that minute at the sufferer's bedside all he had was thrown into the scales. Ruth must be saved. She was the only daughter; she was a worthily beloved daughter. "No, she cannot be moved to Johns Hopkins; the trip is too rough and long; she is too weak," decided Dr.