In the remote regions where Jeb lived there were no laws to break.  Every man’s home was his stronghold, to be protected at the point of a pistol.  He was one of the three million people of good Anglo-Saxon stock who had been stranded in the highlands when the Cumberland Mountains dammed the stream of humanity that swept westward through the level wilderness.  Development had been arrested so long in Jeb and his ancestors that the outside world, its interests and its mode of living, was a matter of supreme and profound indifference.  A sudden and unprecedented emergency had driven him to the “Settlements.”  His girl had developed an ailment that baffled the skill of the herb doctors; so, following one bit of advice after another, he had finally landed in Baltimore.  And now that the terrible journey was ended and Sal was in the hands of the doctor who was to work the cure, the wholly preposterous request was made of him that he abandon her to her fate!

With dogged determination he sat beside the bed, and chewed silently and stolidly through the argument.

“You gals mought ez well save yer wind,” he announced at last.  “Ef Sal stays, I stay.  Ef I go, Sal goes.  We ain’t axin’ favors of nobody.”

He was so much in the way during the necessary preparations for the possible operation that finally Miss Fletcher was appealed to.  She was a woman accustomed to giving orders and to having them obeyed; but she was also a woman of tact.  Ten minutes of valuable time were spent in propitiating the old man before she suggested that he come with her into the corridor while the nurses straightened the room.  A few minutes later she returned, smiling: 

“I’ve corralled him in the linen closet,” she whispered; “he is unpacking his carpet sack as if he meant to take up his abode with us.”

“I am afraid,” said the special nurse, glancing toward the bed, “he won’t have long to stay.  How do you suppose he ever got her here?”

“I asked him.  He said he drove her for three days in an ox-cart along the creek bottom until they got to Jackson.  Then he told the ticket agent to send them to the best hospital the train ran to.  Neither of them had ever seen a train before.  It’s a miracle she’s lived this long.”

“Does he realize her condition?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose I ought to tell him that the end may come at any time.”

But telling him was not an easy matter as Miss Fletcher found when she joined him later in the linen closet.  He was busy spreading his varied possessions along the shelves on top of the piles of immaculate linen, stopping now and then to refresh himself with a bite of salt pork and some corn pone that had been packed for days along with Sally’s shoes and sunbonnet and his own scanty wardrobe.

“I suppose you know,” Miss Fletcher began gently, trying not to show her chagrin at the state of the room, “that your daughter is in a very serious condition.”