She glanced quickly at the stranger, to judge if he had smiled again, perchance, at her outburst, so alert was her pride to take cognizance of ridicule even at the moment that she was sobbing out her errand. His face was grave, so far as the shadows would reveal it. Then her attention reverted to Jake Baintree, and she looked at him with a wondering distrust and curiosity as he suddenly exclaimed, “The Lord’s hand is in it!” So pious he was, to be sure, for a man who had renounced religion, and who had no other use for a river than a wild fowl might find. “The Lord’s hand is in it! No use ter ride fourteen mile; this hyar man’s a doctor, Marcelly, an’ he’ll physic Eli.” He laid his hand on the shoulder of the man at the anvil, who turned and stared at him in palpable amazement. The fire was so low she could barely see his face, but his whole attitude was expressive of surprise and objection. “He’s a valley man, Marcelly, an’ he be a powerful smart man,” Jake Baintree said, with less the air of introduction than of a showman commending a work of art. “He’s the doctor ez physicked me whilst in jail, an’ he brung me through wonderful; an’ that’s how I kem ter be ’quainted with him. He’ll kem right straight, Marcelly,” he continued, with an assurance as of a proprietor. “Ye jes’ run home out’n the rain; we’ll kem ez soon ez we kin. I dunno what ailed me ter let ye stan’ out thar in the rain an’ under them drippin’ eaves all this time. Ye jes’ g’long, an’ we’ll foller ye.” Marcella hesitated for a moment; then turned away from the window, and the dull red scene within disappeared as if it had been caught up into the black night. Outside it seemed darker, if that were possible, than before; the lightnings had ceased their delirious quiver; the winds were steadier; the rain was a continuous down-pour. She kept her hand on the wall of the forge, as she slowly made the circuit around it, still trembling with the excitements of the evening, and anxiously malcontent with the result of the interview. What strange man was this, that lent himself to these curious midnight labors, these unwarranted intrusions? What could he be doing in that forge, with the smith’s tongs, and swage, and bellows, that he wielded as his own? And why was he secret about it, and easily startled and affrighted? And how amazing was it that he, a physician, should be at the disposal of Jake Baintree, and accept his guidance! Then she recollected the astonishment of the stranger, plainly shown, upon Jake Baintree’s proposal that he should act in the place of the distant physician. Was he a doctor at all? she wondered; and suddenly she remembered his evident reluctance, and was chilled with the contradictory fear that after all he might not come. More than once she paused, as she stumbled along in the darkness, to judge if perchance, amidst the clamors of the elements, she might hear their footsteps splashing in the muddy road behind her. No sound save the march of the