"Be tolerant, Sam," returned Alice. "You know you always tell others to be tolerant. Dr. Sperry evidently said what he believed to be the truth. If he has been wrong I am sure he will be the first one to acknowledge it, as any gentleman who has been mistaken would." "Then he shall have the chance," replied Thayor. "You may invite him at once, Alice, if you wish, but for one week only. Too much of Sperry gets on my nerves." * * * * * When Alice reached her bedroom she locked the door and threw herself on the bed in an ecstasy of tears. After some moments she arose with an exultant look in her eyes, went over to her desk, unlocked a jewel case and extracted from between the lining of a hidden compartment a small photograph of Sperry at thirty, taken at Heidelberg. Below the torrent of Big Shanty laughed in the sunlight. CHAPTER THIRTEEN For Thayor to welcome Sperry with a warm grasp of the hand and an outburst of--"Oh! I'm glad you are here; it seems like a special Providence," was so strange and unusual a performance that it is no wonder Alice, moving toward the buckboard to add her own greeting to her husband's, was lost in astonishment even when the cause of the outburst became clear to her. Her husband's mental attitude toward the doctor, if the truth be told, was one of the things that had never ceased to trouble her. Polite as he was to everybody, he had been so particularly polite to Sperry that it always aroused her suspicions. She knew he had sent for him purely to oblige her and to help her over the chasm which divided Big Shanty from Newport, but what other reasons her husband had for inviting him to share his hospitality at the camp, she was not so familiar with. It therefore came as a distinct surprise when she heard him repeat with increased warmth in his manner: "Yes, a special Providence, my dear Dr. Sperry"--nor did the real cause of the doctor's welcome set her mind at rest. "This way, doctor," continued Thayor, dragging Sperry with him. "Blakeman will bring your bag. One of our men is badly hurt; I was on my way to him when I heard you driving up. He's only a few rods away--hurry!" The little man lay on his back on the floor of the lower shanty where the men had carried him. The chain cinching down a heavy sapling binding a load of shingles had snapped, and the wiry little Frenchman--Gaston Le Boeuf--who was standing on top of the load, had been shot into the air and landed in a ditch with his right forearm splintered in two. The pain was intense, both bones of the forearm--the ulnar and radius--being shattered transversely, the ulnar poking through the flesh in an ugly blue wound.