inside. It is a common saying that in cases of trying illness or serious
accident a patient would rather "hear the Doctor cuss, than listen to
the parson pray." Other physicians there are in Corinth, but every one
understands when his neighbor says: "The Doctor." Nor does anyone ever,
ever call him "Doc"!

After all, who knows the people of a community so well as the physician
who lives among them? To the world the Doctor's patients were laborers,
bankers, dressmakers, scrub-women, farmers, servants, teachers,
preachers; to the Doctor they were men and women. Others knew their
occupations--he knew their lives. The preachers knew what they
professed--he knew what they practiced. Society saw them dressed up--he
saw them--in bed. Why, the Doctor has spent more hours in the homes of
his neighbors than ever he passed under his own roof, and there is not a
skeleton closet in the whole town to which he has not the key.

On Strong Avenue, across from the monument, is a tiny four-roomed
cottage. In the time of this story it wanted paint badly, and was not in
the best of repair. But the place was neat and clean, with a big lilac
bush just inside the gate, giving it an air of home-like privacy; and on
the side directly opposite the Doctor's a fair-sized, well-kept garden,
giving it an air of honest thrift. Here the widow Mulhall lived with her
crippled son, Denny. Denny was to have been educated for the priesthood,
but the accident that left him such a hopeless cripple shattered that
dream; and after the death of his father, who was killed while
discharging his duties as the town marshal, there was no money to buy
even a book.

When there was anything for her to do, Deborah worked out by the day.
Denny, in spite of his poor, misshapen body, tended the garden, raising