At more and more infrequent intervals, the village doctor made his toilsome way up the slippery mountain side, sat regarding the little patient with a hopelessly puzzled look, and finally departed, shaking his head; but he never failed to leave behind him another bottle of obnoxious medicine on the chance that if one did not produce an improvement, another might. Even to the girl it was all too apparent, however, that he was aiming blindly into the dark. There came a time when the child spoke scarcely at all, save to moan piteously something about the pain in her head; her emaciated legs barely carried her on her uncertain course; her vague, sweet eyes turned inward more and more; and it was with the greatest difficulty, and only by the exercise of infinite patience that Smiles could feed her. The little mountain blossom was wilting and fading slowly away. On the afternoon of the first day of January Dr. Johnston spent a long time at the cabin, striving against the impossible to solve the problem which confronted him like an appalling mystery, far too deep to be pierced by the feeble ray of science at his command. At last he arose with a gesture of finality, and announced to the anxiously waiting girl, "I reckon I'm done. I won't go so fur as to say that a city specialist might not be able to help her; but hanged if _I_ can. The trouble is too much for me, and I guess Lou is just a-goin' to die." Sudden tears welled into Smiles' luminous eyes, and ran unheeded down her cheeks, now unnaturally thin and wan. "Hit haint so," she cried in a choked voice. "Lou haint ergoin' ter die, Dr. Johnston!" Suddenly she stopped, as her thoughts flew backward on the wings of memory. Her eyes grew larger, a strange light came into them. Then, speaking slowly, almost as though the words were impelled by a will other than her own, she added with a tone of absolute certainty: "Yo' allows _yo'_ don't know what the trouble air, but _I_ does." The doctor was startled and looked as though he thought that he was about to have another patient on his hands. "Hit air a brain tumor thet she hes got, I knows it, an' I knows one of the few doctor men in this hyar country what kin cure hit. He air _ergoin'_ ter cure hit fer me, an' leetle Lou haint _ergoin'_ ter die." Uncertain what to make of this outburst, the doctor departed rather hastily. Smiles caught up her shawl and ran immediately to Judd's lonely, cheerless abode, which she entered without a thought of knocking. She found the man sitting dejectedly before a feeble fire. He sprang up, voiceless terror apparent in the look which he turned upon her white face, but, without pausing for any preliminaries, Rose said, "The doctor, he's been ter see our little Lou again, Judd. He allows thet he can't do anything more for her, and thet she has got ter die."