“Mo’ ’yide!” cried the child, looking up backward, to find Faber’s eyes.

But her aunt caught her by the feet, and amid struggling and laughter drew her down, and held her in her arms.

“I hope your father is pretty well, Miss Drake,” said the doctor, wasting no time in needless explanation.

“Ducky,” said the girl, setting down the child, “go and tell grandpapa how kind Dr. Faber has been to you.  Tell him he is at the door.”  Then turning to Faber, “I am sorry to say he does not seem at all well,” she answered him.  “He has had a good deal of annoyance lately, and at his age that sort of thing tells.”

As she spoke she looked up at the doctor, full in his face, but with a curious quaver in her eyes.  Nor was it any wonder she should look at him strangely, for she felt toward him very strangely:  to her he was as it were the apostle of a kakangel, the prophet of a doctrine that was evil, yet perhaps was a truth.  Terrible doubts had for some time been assailing her—­doubts which she could in part trace to him, and as he sat there on Ruber, he looked like a beautiful evil angel, who knew there was no God—­an evil angel whom the curate, by his bold speech, had raised, and could not banish.

The surgeon had scarcely begun a reply, when the old minister made his appearance.  He was a tall, well-built man, with strong features, rather handsome than otherwise; but his hat hung on his occiput, gave his head a look of weakness and oddity that by nature did not belong to it, while baggy, ill-made clothes and big shoes manifested a reaction from the over-trimness of earlier years.  He greeted the doctor with a severe smile.

“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Faber,” he said, “for bringing me home my little runaway.  Where did you find her?”

“Under my horse’s head, like the temple between the paws of the Sphinx,” answered Faber, speaking a parable without knowing it.

“She is a fearless little damsel,” said the minister, in a husky voice that had once rung clear as a bell over crowded congregations—­“too fearless at times.  But the very ignorance of danger seems the panoply of childhood.  And indeed who knows in the midst of what evils we all walk that never touch us!”

“A Solon of platitudes!” said the doctor to himself.

“She has been in the river once, and almost twice,” Mr. Drake went on. “—­I shall have to tie you with a string, pussie!  Come away from the horse.  What if he should take to stroking you?  I am afraid you would find his hands both hard and heavy.”

“How do you stand this trying spring weather, Mr. Drake?  I don’t hear the best accounts of you,” said the surgeon, drawing Ruber a pace back from the door.

“I am as well as at my age I can perhaps expect to be,” answered the minister.  “I am getting old—­and—­and—­we all have our troubles, and, I trust, our God also, to set them right for us,” he added, with a suggesting look in the face of the doctor.