often thrown it, and thinking of them he hastened his toilet that he might go in and do what he could to help the patient. It was small enough return for the kindness shown him. He feared to offer money for his lodgment, at least until he could find a way.

At last, full of new vigor and very hungry, he issued from his sleeping-room, sadly in need of a shave, but biding his time, satisfied if only breakfast might be forthcoming. He had no need to knock, for the house door stood open, flooding the place with sunlight and frosty air. The huge pile of logs was blazing on the hearth as if it had never ceased since the night before, and the flames leaped hot and red up the great chimney.

Old Sally no longer presided at the cookery. With a large cup of black coffee before her, she now sat at the table eating corn-bread and bacon. A drooping black sunbonnet on her head covered her unkempt, grizzly hair, and a cob pipe and bag of tobacco lay at her hand. She was ready for departure. Cassandra had returned, and her gratuitous neighborly offices were at an end. The girl was stooping before the fire, arranging a cake of corn-bread to cook in the ashes. A crane swung over the flames on which a fat iron kettle was hung, and the large coffee-pot stood on the hearth. The odor of breakfast was[Pg 28] savory and appetizing. As David's tall form cast a shadow across the sunlit space on the floor, the old mother's voice called to him from the corner.

[Pg 28]

"Come right in, Doctah; take a cheer and set. Your breakfast's ready, I reckon. How have you slept, suh?"

The girl at the fire rose and greeted him, but he missed the boy. "Where's the little chap?" he asked.

"Cassandry sont him out to wash up. F'ust thing she do when she gets home is to begin on Hoyle and wash him up."

"He do get that dirty, poor little son," said the girl. "It's like I have to torment him some. Will you have breakfast now, suh? Just take your chair to the table, and I'll fetch it directly."

"Won't I, though! What air you have up here! It makes me hungry merely to breathe. Is it this way all the time?"

"Hit's this-a-way a good deal," said Sally, from under her sunbonnet, "Oh, the' is days hit's some colder, like to make water freeze right hard, but most days hit's a heap warmer than this."

"That's so," said the invalid. "I hev seen it so warm a 

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