of all others--and so I came away. If you stay long enough, you'll
hear the bell toll, I reckon. There is none at Honedale Church, which
they attend. They are Episcopalians, you see, and so they'll come up
here, maybe. I hope I shall be deafer than an adder."

Here the doctor stopped, wholly out of breath, while Guy for a moment
sat without speaking a single word. Jessie, in his hearing, had told
her mother what the sick girl in the doctor's office had said about
being poor and wanting the money for grandpa, while Mrs. Noah had
given him a rather exaggerated account of Mr. Markham's visit; but he
had not associated the two together until now, when he saw the whole,
and almost as much as the doctor himself regretted the part he had had
in Maddy's illness and her grandfather's distress.

"Doc," he said, laying his hand on the doctor's arm, "I am that old
hunks, the miserly rascal who refused the money. I met the old man
going home that day, and he asked me for help. You say the place must
be sold. It never shall, never. I'll see to that, and you must save
the girl."

"I can't, Guy. I've done all I can, and now, if she lives, it will be
wholly owing to the prayers that old saint of a grandfather says for
her. I never thought much of these things until I heard him pray; not
that she should live anyway, but that if it were right Maddy might not
die. Guy, there's something in such a prayer as that. It's more
powerful than all my medicine swallowed at one grand gulp."

Guy didn't know very much about praying then, and so he did not
respond, but he thought of Lucy Atherstone, whose life was one hymn of
prayer and praise, and he wished she could know of Maddy, and join her