filial feeling, you might show him the way instead of standing there like a classical figure of despair on a monument smiling at a bloody temple. I'm ashamed of you. Where's your equanimity? Ouch! Jerusalem! Sante Fe! You don't need to try to carry me, man. I can walk. Leslie, if you haven't any religious scruples against really opening the door while you are about it, perhaps this procession could get through without scraping the skin off its elbows,--"

Burton had slipped his shoulder under the doctor's arm, and, guided by Leslie, he got him through a hall which seemed interminably long, and into the room which he had called the surgery. Burton helped him to the leathern couch.

"Get me some hot water," he said in a hasty aside to Leslie, and she quickly left the room.

He stripped off Dr. Underwood's shoe, and began to manipulate the swollen ankle.

"This isn't going to be serious," he said soothingly. "It's merely a strain, not a dislocation. It will be painful for a while,--"

"Will be! Jerusalem, what do you think it is now? You are a doctor."

"No. But I have had some experience with accidents. If you want me to go for a doctor,--"

"You are all I can stand at present, thank you. I know you are a doctor by your confounded nerve. Will be painful! I wish it were your ankle, confound you. And I'll never grumble again when my patients swear at me. I never realized before what a relief it is to swear at your doctor. How did you happen to be here? I suppose it was an accident and not a special dispensation of Providence."

"I was the bearer of a message to your daughter, and so happened to be on hand at the right moment, that's all. My name is Burton,--Hugh Burton, Putney, Massachusetts."

"A message? From whom? What about?"

"There, doesn't that begin to feel more comfortable?"

"Humph! That's a neat way of telling me to mind my own business."

Burton merely laughed. "Let me look at this cut in your temple. So! Any more damages?"

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