"How is Mr. Preston?" he asked. Mrs. Ducharme shook her head mournfully. "Bad, allus awful bad--and _pitiful_. Calling for stuff in a voice fit to break your heart." "Mind you don't let him get any," the doctor counselled, preparing to go upstairs. "Better not go up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He _did_ get away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there." She hitched her shoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found out till he'd been gone 'most two hours, and, my! such goings on; we had to git two perlicemen." "I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in a severe tone. "It was the last time," the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come in here. Miss Preston ain't got back from school,--she's late to-day." Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharme leaned against the door-post, fingering her apron in an embarrassed manner. "I've got cured," she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it's been most a week since you sent me here." "Did you follow my treatment?" "No! I was out one afternoon--after Mrs. Preston came back from school--and I had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I passed a buildin' down here a ways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over the windows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in great theaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I was lookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along and helped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finishin' with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood of the lamb.' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough church fitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin' folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, and the old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me and says, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walked to the platform, and they prayed over me--you aren't mad, are you?" she asked suspiciously. Sommers laughed. "Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any rate the old fellow--Dr.--Dr.--Po--" "Dr. Potz," Sommers suggested. "That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him about Ducharme. And _he_ says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it out by prayin'. But he wants money." "How much will it cost to cast out the devil?" the doctor inquired. "The doctor says he must have ten dollars to loosen the bonds." "Well," Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars on account of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. You let him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the other woman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring the devil back again." The woman took the money eagerly.