"You are right good to keer fer him like you have. I'd do a heap fer you ef I could. All I have is jest this here farm, an' hit's fer you an' Cass. On'y ef ye'd 'low me an' leetle Hoyle to bide on here whilst we live--" David was touched. "Do you realize I've found here the two greatest things in the world, love and health? All I want is for you to know and remember that if I can't succeed in doing all I would like for the boy, at least I tried my very best. I may not succeed, you know, but this is the only thing to do now--the only thing." David parted from his young wife, leaving her standing in the door of their cabin, clad in her white homespun frock, smiling, yet tearful and pale. He was to walk down to the Fall Place, where Jerry Carew waited with the wagon in which he had arrived, and where his baggage had been brought the day before. When he came to the steepest part of the descent, he looked back and saw Cassandra still standing as if in a trance, gazing after him. He felt his heart lean towards her, and, turning sharply, walked swiftly to her and took her once more in his arms and looked down into those deep springs--her sweet gray eyes. Thus for a long moment he held her to his heart with never a word. Then she entered the little home, and he walked away, looking back no more. CHAPTER XXIII IN WHICH DOCTOR HOYLE SPEAKS HIS MIND Doctor Hoyle sat in his office staring straight before him, not as if he were looking at David Thryng, who sat in range of his vision, but as if seeing beyond him into some other time and place. David had been speaking, but now they both were silent, and the young man wondered if his old friend had really been paying attention to his words or not. "Well, Doctor," he said at last. "Well, David." "You don't seem satisfied. Is it with my condition?" "Your condition? No, no, no! It's not your condition. Yes, yes--fine, fine. I never saw such a marvellous change in my life, never!" David smiled over the old doctor's stammer of enthusiasm. It was as if his thoughts, fertile and vehement, and the feelings of his great, warm heart welled up within him, and, trying to burst forth all at once, tumbled over themselves, unable to secure words rapidly enough in which to give themselves utterance. "Then why so silent and dubious?" "Why--why--y--young man, I wasn't thinking anything about you just then." And again David laughed, while his wiry old friend jumped up and walked rapidly and restlessly about the small apartment and laughed in sympathy. "It's not--not--" "I know." David grew instantly sober again. "Of course the little chap's case is serious--very--or I would not have brought him to you." "Oh, no, no, I'm not thinking of Adam, bless you, no." The doctor always called his little namesake Adam. "I'm thinking of her--the little girl you left behind you. Yes--yes. Of her." "She's not so little now, Doctor; she's tall--tall enough to be beautiful."