"Splendid!" exclaimed Madison enthusiastically. "And the glorious thing about it is that there's no reason why everybody can't be cured if they'll only come here in the right spirit." "That's so!" agreed Marvin. "None are so blind as those who won't see--they're in utter blackness compared with the physical blindness of that grand and marvelous man. I'm going home myself in another week--better than ever I was in my life. It was stomach with me, you know--doctors said there wasn't any chance except to operate, and that an operation was too slim a chance to be worth risking it." He got up and laughed, carefree, joyous. "God-given place down here, isn't it? Clean--that's it. Clean air, clean-souled people, clean everything you see or do or hear. Say, it kind of opens your eyes to real living, doesn't it--it's the luxuries and the worries and the pace and the damn-fooleries that kill. Well, I'm going along back now to get some of Mrs. Perkins' cream--clean, rich cream--and homemade bread and butter--imagine me with an appetite and able to eat!" He laughed again--and Madison joined him in the laugh, slapping him a cordial good-by on the shoulder. Madison started on once more--but now his progress was slow, frequently interrupted, for he stopped a score of times to chat and exchange a few words with those whom he passed on the road. There were cheery faces everywhere--even those of the sufferers who straggled out along the road coming back from the Patriarch's cottage. It was a cheery afternoon, warm and balmy and bright--everything was cheery. The farmers, their vocations for the moment changed, waved their whips at him and shouted friendly pleasantries as they drove by with those who were unable to make the trip from the Patriarch's unaided. Madison began to experience a strange, exhilarating sense of uplift upon him, a sort of rather commendatory and gratified feeling with himself. Marvin had hit it pretty nearly right with his "clean-wholesomeness" idea--it kind of made one feel good to be a part of it. Madison, for the time being, relegated Helena and his immediate mission to a secondary place in his thoughts. Young girls, young men, middle-aged men, elderly women, all ages of both sexes he passed as he went along; some alone, some in couples, some in little groups, some on crutches, some in wheel-chairs, some walking without extraneous aid--he had turned into the woods now, and he could see them strewn out all along the wagon track under the cool, interlacing branches overhead.