For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums grow into a sturdy manhood in his new environment. He snapped at every suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not only discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he invented new machinery for its working that doubled the market output. Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was paying a steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had made just one trip to New York and secretly returned to the police every stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the time and place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from the workshop on the east side before his sensational act and made good his departure for the South. The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which overlooks the valley toward Asheville. The Doctor had lent Jim the blue-prints of his own home and he was quietly duplicating it with loving care. His wife might refuse to see him but he could build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't refuse it. With childlike obedience Nance followed him every day and watched the workmen rear the beautiful structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful hands. The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only the Doctor knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he kept his own counsel. CHAPTER XXVII. THE BABY The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost buds into full bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's bungalow. The martins that built each year in the little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not a cloud flecked the skies. A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled and heard her summons. “You are not afraid?” the Doctor asked. She turned her grateful eyes to his. “The peace of God fills the world--and I owe it all to you.” “Nonsense. Your sturdy will and cultivated mind did the work. I merely made the suggestion.” “You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are you?” she said evenly. “Why did you ask that?” “Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory of it all.” “You don't wish to take it?” “Not unless you say I should.”