“Does that seem so strange?”

“It might very naturally seem so, to one who knows what you have to make you the happiest of the happy.”

“You yourself didn’t find happiness among similar surroundings,” she said, looking at him intently.

“Similar?” The thought seemed to amuse him.

“Well, weren’t they similar?  At any rate we were in the same world, and you say now we are not.”

“We are so far apart,” said he evenly, “that we can only signal to each other.  And even then—­neither is familiar with the other’s code!”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and a strange expression showed in her eyes.  “What a hard, hard thing for you to say!  It doesn’t sound like you.”

“Hard?” he questioned, with a contraction of the brows.  “It is substantially what you yourself once said.  If it was true then, it must be true now.”

Moved by some impulse the two looked at each other searchingly, Donald Brown’s face grave but tense, Helena Forrest’s full of a proud pain.  Clearly they were not understanding each other’s code now—­so much was evident.

At this instant, without warning, the outer door flew open.  Mrs. Kelcey, her round red face disordered, her breath coming short, stood upon the threshold and spoke pantingly, without regard to the company assembled: 

“Mr. Brown, sor!  The baby’s dyin—­the sthranger child.  It was took all of a suddint.  Would ye moind comin’ to say a bit of a prayer over him?  Father McCarty’s away, or I wouldn’t ask it.”

She was gone with the words.  With the first sentence Brown had sprung to his feet.  As Mary Kelcey vanished he turned to Doctor Brainard.

“Come, Doctor,” he said, with a beckoning hand.  “While I say the bit of a prayer you try what you can do to keep the baby here!”

The eminent physician rose rather slowly to his feet.  “It’s probably no use,” he demurred.  “The woman knows.”

“The Lord knows, too,” declared Brown, with a propelling hand on his friend’s arm:  “knows that you’re here to give the child a chance.  Come!  Hurry!”

The two went out.  Doctor Brainard would have stayed for his hat and overcoat, but Brown would brook no delay.

Left behind, the party by the fire looked at one another with faces sobered.  Hugh Breckenridge consulted his watch.

“It’s time we were off,” he declared.  “The Doctor’s going to stay anyway, and it’s no use waiting for Don to come back.”

“That’s right,” agreed Webb Atchison.  “I came up here once before, about six months ago, and I saw then enough of the way things went here to know that he lives at the beck and call of every man, woman, and child in this district—­and they call him, too.  He’d just finished sobering up a drunkard that night, or scant attention I’d have had.  Well, I’ll walk down to the hotel and send back Rogers and the car.  Be ready in ten minutes?”

They said they would be ready.  But in Brown’s little bedroom, donning furry wraps, Helena Forrest spoke in Sue Breckenridge’s ear: