"We understood his folks had put him on the town," said he. Mattie made a little eager sound, and then stopped. "He ain't on the town yet," said Mary. "He's in my bedroom. An' there he's goin' to stay. I've took this job." She turned away from them, erect in her decision, and went up the path. Eli Pike looked after her, with an understanding sympathy. He was the man who had walked two miles, one night, to shoot a fox, trapped, and left there helpless with a broken leg. Lothrop gazed straight ahead, and said nothing. "Look here!" called Ebenezer. "Mary! Mary! you look here!" Mary turned about at the door. She was magnificent in her height and dignity. Even Ebenezer felt almost ashamed of what he had to say; but still the public purse must be regarded. "You can't bring in a bill for services," he announced. "If he's on the town, he'll have to go right into the Poorhouse with the rest." Mary made no answer. She stood there a second, looking at him, and he remarked to Eli, "I guess you might drive on." But Mattie, following Mary up to the house, to talk it over, tried the door in vain. "My land!" she ejaculated, "if she ain't bolted it!" So the nurse and her patient were left to themselves. As to the rest of the story, I tell it as we hear it still in Tiverton. At first, it was reckoned among the miracles; but when the new doctor came, he explained that it accorded quite honestly with the course of violated nature, and that, with some slight pruning here and there, the case might figure in his books. What science would say about it, I do not know; tradition was quite voluble. It proved a very long time before Johnnie grew better, and in all those days Mary Dunbar was a happy woman. She stepped about the house, setting it in order, watching her charge, and making delicate possets for him to take. When the "herb-man" came, she turned him away from the door with a regal courtesy. It was not so much that she despised his knowledge, as that he knew no more than she, and this was her patient. The young doctor in Tiverton told her afterwards that she had done a dangerous thing in not calling in some accredited wearer of the cloth; but Mary did not think of that. She went on her way of innocence, delightfully content. And all those days, Johnnie Veasey, as soon as he came out of his fever, lay there and watched her with eyes full of a listless wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where the unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which admitted no appeal. "I've got sickness here," she would say, standing in the doorway confronting them. "He's too weak to see anybody; I guess I won't ask you in."