Doctor Carey had not startled the same old loafers who kept watch over the railway station when he suddenly dropped into the town again. They were too busy watching the capers of Clover Creek to attend to their regular post of duty. And since he had been a guest of Miss Jane Aydelot as much as a half dozen times in two decades, they knew about what to expect of him now. They were more interested in a big bluff stranger who dropped into town off the early morning train, ate a plentiful meal at the depot restaurant, and then strolled down to the creek. He loitered all day about the spot where the grade broke, nor did he leave the place when the crowd was called away late in the afternoon to a little stream on the other side of town that had suddenly risen to be a river for the first time in the memory of man. To Doctor Carey, Jane Aydelot looked scarce a day older for the dozen years gone by. Her days were serene and full of good works. Such women do not lose the charm of youth until late in life. "I have come for help, as you told me to do when I took Leigh away," Doctor Carey said as they sat on the south veranda in the pleasant light of the May evening. Jane Aydelot's face was expectant. Nobody except Doctor Carey knew how a little hungry longing in her eyes disappeared when he made his brief visits and crept back again when he said good-by. "I am waiting always to help you," she replied. "I need fourteen hundred dollars to loan to Leigh, and I must have that sum at once." Miss Jane looked thoughtfully at the deep woodland, hiding the marshes as of old. "I can arrange it," she said presently. "Tell me about it." And Horace Carey told her all of Leigh's plans. "It is a wonderful undertaking for a girl, but she has faith in herself, and if she fails, the land is abundantly worth the mortgage with nothing but weeds on it," the doctor explained. "She is a charming girl. She seems to have inherited all of her mother's sweetness and artistic gifts, without her mother's submissiveness to others; and from her father, she has keen business qualities, but fails to inherit his love of gain and traits of trickery. Her executive mind with her uncle's good heart make a winning team. By the way, my affection for Jim Shirley is leading me to make some quiet investigation of an agent of Tank's who is hounding Jim and will, I suppose, turn against Leigh. Can you help me at all?" Doctor Carey had always felt that Miss Jane knew much more than she cared to tell of the Shirley family's affairs. She rose without replying and went into the house. In a few minutes she returned and gave a large sealed envelope into Doctor Carey's hands. "Do not use that until it is needed to protect someone from Tank Shirley's violence. It is legally drawn and witnessed. You will find it effective if it is needed at all." "I have one more duty, Miss Aydelot," Doctor Carey said. "My time is brief. I have an intuition, too, that I may never come East again."