"One does one's duty as one finds it, of course," said the big doctor,
looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
head. "Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it,
come what will. There's no getting around _that!_" He glanced at me, a
shadow in his kind gray eyes. "But there are times, my friend, when I
wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got
to die. There's no help and no hope--she's got to die, and she a
mother of young children. So I have to try desperately," said the
doctor, rubbing his nose, "to cling tooth and claw to the hope that
there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of
things--sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things--and
uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"

We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
type,--not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.

There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency
burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty