When, at the end of the first year, old Dr. Pastergood, who had ushered Cornelia herself into this world, turned to them with her first child in his arms, the young father stood by, controlling his great rush of primal joy, his boyish desire to do something noisy and violent; the mother looked first at her husband, then into the old doctor's face, with eyes of passionate delight and appeal. He was speechless a moment, for pity. Then he said, gently: “Hit's gone, befo' hit ever come to us, Cornely. Hit never breathed a breath of this werrisome world.” A man who had practised medicine in the Turkey Tracks for twenty-five years --a doctor among these mountain people, where poverty is the rule, hardship a condition of life, and tragedy a fairly familiar element, would have had his fibre well stiffened. The brave old campaigner, who had sat beside so many death-beds and so many birth-beds, and had seen so many come and so many go, at the exits and entrances of life, met the matter stoutly and without flinching. His stoic air, his words of passive acceptance, laid a calm upon the first outburst of bitter grief from the two young creatures. Later, when John had gone to do the chores, the old doctor still sat by Cornelia's bed. He took the girl's hand in his--an unusual demonstration of feeling for a mountaineer--and said to her, gently, “Cornely, there won't never be no mo'--there'll be nair another baby to you, honey.” The stricken girl fastened her eyes upon his in dumb pain and protest. She said nothing, the wound was too deep; only her lips quivered pitifully and the tears ran down upon the pillow. “Now, now, honey, don't ye go to fret that-a-way. W'y, Cornely, ye was made for a mother; the Lord made ye for such--an' do ye 'low 'at He don't know what He's a-gwine to do with the work of His hands? 'For mo' air the children of the desolate'--don't ye know Scripter says?--than of them that has many. Lord love ye, honey, girl, you'll be mother to a minny and a minny. They air a-comin'; the Lord's a-sendin' 'em. W'y, honey,--you and John will have children gathered around you--” The one cry broke forth from Cornelia which she ever uttered through all her long grief of childlessness: “Oh, but, Dr. Pastergood, I wanted mine--my own--and John's! Oh, I reckon it was idolatry the way I felt in my heart; I thought, to have a little trick-bone o' my bone, flesh o' my flesh--look up at me with John's eyes--” A sob choked her utterance, and never again was it resumed.