vanished.

So with a prodigious stamping of snow from his feet and a cheerful wave
of his mittened hand to the boy by the window, the Doctor bustled
cheerily indoors and with kindly eyes averted from the single tell-tale
sauce-pan upon the fire, over which Madge Hildreth had bent with sudden
color, fell to bustling about with a queer lump in his throat and
talking ambiguously of Aunt Ellen's Christmas orders, painfully
conscious that the girl's dark face had grown pitifully white and tense
and that Roger's wan little face was glowing. And when the fire was
damped by the Doctor himself, and his Christmas guests hustled into
dazed, protesting readiness, the Doctor deftly muffled the thin little
fellow in blankets and gently carried him out to the waiting sleigh with
arms that were splendid and sturdy and wonderfully reassuring.

"There, there, little man!" he said cheerfully, "we've not hurt the poor
lame leg once, I reckon. And now we'll just help Sister Madge blow out
the lamp and lock the door and be off to Aunt Ellen!"

But, strangely enough, the Doctor halted abruptly in the doorway and
turned his kindly eyes away to the shadowy pines. And Sister Madge, on
her knees by Roger's bed, sobbing and praying in an agony of relief,
presently blew out the lamp herself and wiped her eyes. For nights among
the whispering pines are sleepless and long when work is scarce and
Christmas hovers with cold, forbidding eyes over the restless couch of a
dear and crippled brother.