"I know Miss Virginia back in the Souf, suh. I done come to take keer of this kitchen depahtment. I know jus' what she lak mos' suh," Bo Peep said to Jim, who had not moved nor spoken. "I'se Misteh Bone-ah-gees Peepehville, an' I done live with Doctah Carey's family all mah life, suh, 'cept a short time I spent in the Jacobs House at Carey's Crossing. I'se his custodian now, suh, and I know a few things about the cookin' depahtment, suh." He looked the part, and Jim accepted him gladly. It is given to some men to know the power of the healing spirit. Dr. Carey was such a man. His presence controlled the atmosphere of the place. There was balm in his voice and in the touch of his hand as much as in his medicines. To him his own calling was divine. Who shall say that the hope and belief with which his few drugs were ministered carried not equal power with them toward health and wholeness? When Virginia Aydelot had fallen asleep at last the doctor came into the kitchen and sat down with the two haggard men to whom his coming had brought unspeakable solace. "You can take comfort, Mr. Aydelot," he said assuringly. "Your wife has been well cared for. Hardly one man in a thousand could do as well as you have done. I wonder you never studied medicine." "You seem confident of results, Doctor," Asher said gratefully. "I have known the Thaine family all my life," Horace Carey said quietly. And Asher, whose mind was surged with anxiety, did not even think to be surprised. "We did not recognize each other when I found her on the way to Carey's Crossing three or four years ago, and--I did not know she was married then." He sat a while in silence, looking at the window against which the wind outside was whirling the snow. When he spoke again his tone was hopeful. "Mrs. Aydelot has had a nervous shock. But she is young. She has a heritage of will power and good blood. She will climb up rapidly with the coming on of spring." How strange it was to Asher Aydelot to listen to such words! He had not slept for fifty hours. It had seemed to him that the dreadful storm outside and sickness and the presence of death within were to be unending, and that in all the world Jim Shirley would henceforth be his only friend. "You both need sleep," Carey was saying in a matter-of-fact way. "Bo Peep will take care of things here, and I will look after Mrs. Aydelot. You will attend to the burial at the earliest possible time in order to save her any signs of grieving. And you will not grieve either until you have more time. And remember, Aydelot," he put his hand comfortingly on Asher's shoulders. "Remember in this affliction that your ambition may stake out claims and set up houses, but it takes a baby's hand to really anchor the hearthstones. And sometimes it takes even more. It needs a little grave as well. I understood from Shirley that some financial loss last fall prevented you from going back to Ohio. You wouldn't leave Grass River now if you could."