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“He’s feverish,” said she. “Mattie didn’t tell me that. How long’s he been so?”

“I dunno. I guess a matter o’ two days.”

“Two days?”

“Well, it might be off an’ on ever sence he fell.” Adam was helpless. He depended upon Mattie, and Mattie was not there.

“What did the doctor leave?”

Adam looked about him. “‘T was the Herb doctor,” he said. “He had her steep some trade in a bowl.”

Mary Dunbar drew her hand away, and walked two or three times up and down the bare, bleak room. The seeking eyes were following her. She knew how little their distended agony might mean; but nevertheless they carried an entreaty. They leaned upon her, as the world, her sick world, was wont to lean. Mary was, in many things, a child; but her attitude had grown to be maternal. Suddenly she turned to Adam, where he stood, shaking and hesitating, in the doorway.

“You goin’ to send him off?”

“Pears as if that’s the only way,” shuffled Adam.

“To-day?”

“Well, I dunno ‘s they’ll come”–

Mary walked past him, her mind assured.

“There, that’ll do,” said she. “You set down in your corner. I’ll be back byme-by.”

She hurried out into the bleak world which was her home, and, at that moment, it looked very fair and new. The birds were singing, loudly as they ever sang up here where there were few leaves to nest in. Mary stopped an instant to listen, and lifted her face wordlessly to the clear blue sky. It seemed as if she had been given a gift. There, before one of the houses, she called aloud, with a long, lingering note, “Jacob!” and Jacob Pease rose from; his milking-stool, and came forward. Jacob was tall and snuff-colored, a widower of three years’ standing. There was a theory that he wanted Mary, and lacked the courage to ask her.

“That you, Mary Dunbar?” said he. “Anything on hand?”

“I want you to come and help me lift,” answered Mary.

Jacob set down his milk pail, and followed her into the Veaseys’ kitchen. She drew out the tin basin, and filled it at the sink.

“Wash your hands,” said she. “Adam, you set where you generally do. You’ll be in the way.”

Jacob followed her into the sick-room, and Adam weakly shuffled in behind.

“For the land’s sake!” he began, but Mary was at the head of the bed, and Jacob at the foot.

“I’ll carry his shoulders,” she said, in the voice that admits no demur. “You take his feet and legs. Sort o’ fold the feather-bed up round him, or we never shall get him through the door.”

“Which way?” asked Jacob, still entirely at rest on a greater mind.

“Out!” commanded Mary,–“out the front door.”

Adam, in describing that dramatic moment, always declared that nobody but Mary Dunbar could have engineered a feather-bed through the narrow passage, without sticking midway. He recalled an incident of his boyhood when, in the Titcomb fire, the whole family had spent every available instant before the falling of the roof, in trying to push the second-best bed through the attic window, only to leave it there to burn. But Mary Dunbar took her patient through the doorway as Napoleon marched over the Alps; she went with him down the road toward her own little house under the hill. Only then did Adam, still shuffling on behind, collect his intelligence sufficiently to shout after her,–

“Mary, what under the sun be you doin’ of? What you want me to tell Mattie? S’pose she brings the selec’men, Mary Dunbar!”

She made no reply, even by a glance. She walked straight on, as if her burden lightened, and into her own cave-like house and her little neat bedroom.

“Lay him down jest as he is,” she said to Jacob. “We won’t try to shift him to-day. Let him get over this.”

Jacob stretched himself, after his load, put his hands in his pockets, and made up his mouth into a soundless whistle.

“Yes! well!” said he. “Guess I better finish milkin’.”