"Dear! dear!" she cried, in consternation, standing with the dripping porridge-stick held over the hot stove. "I dunno. There's a letter on your desk," she added reluctantly. Gilbert darted into his office and tore open the note. Harwood had been called out in the night to an urgent case, fifteen miles away, and would not be back till the afternoon. The young doctor walked slowly to the frosty window and looked out upon the white lawn, the paper crushed in his hand. He stood there, motionless, for fully a minute, and when he turned away his face was very stern. He walked upstairs and knocked peremptorily on the door of Davy's room. The high, falsetto squeak of a gramophone was coming gaily through the portal, and without waiting for an answer Gilbert impatiently put his head through the doorway. Since the lawnmower had gone to its well-earned rest Mr. Munn lived only for this other instrument, the sound of whose music he found similar to that of his lost treasure. He was sitting up in bed now, shrouded in blankets, a smile of content illuminating his face, while the buzzing little machine on the table at his side was grinding out a Sousa march. The stern look on the doctor's face startled the young man. He stared in perturbation. "Is anybody dead?" he whispered. "Jump up quick," said the doctor sharply, "and run down and feed Speed right away; I want her again in a few minutes, do you understand? Then go down to the track when Lauchie stops, and give him a telegram I want sent on. Tell him I'm not going to Toronto." On the third day of the new year, when John McIntyre was quite out of danger, Gilbert went over to Mrs. Winters' to ask if she could do something to make the man's surroundings more comfortable. This was just the opportunity for which the village manager had been longing ever since the watchman had taken up his residence at the Drowned Lands. She organized a housecleaning brigade, and every woman in the place joined the ranks. Old Hughie Cameron drove them down the ravine in Sandy McQuarry's big sleigh, and they descended upon John McIntyre's establishment, and soaked and washed and scrubbed until there seemed no small danger of the little shanty's joining the Drowned Lands under a deluge of soapy water. They brought all sorts of comforts, too. Miss Arabella donated her bedroom rug with the purple robins. Miss McQuarry brought bedclothes, Mrs. Winters a feather mattress, and the Longs cooking utensils; and they made beef-tea and chicken broth and jellies, until, from fearing that his patient might die of neglect, the doctor changed to apprehensions lest he be killed with over-attention.