“I guess I ain’t much worse than you,” mumbled Pale Face Harry.  “You’re whiter than a sheet.”

“You’re right,” admitted Madison frankly.  “I’m queer, but I’m coming around.  Helena seems to be the only one who never lost her grip—­she’s got the Patriarch and the Flopper out of the way and under cover.  Brace up, Harry—­what I thought we’d get in the Roost that night is counterfeit money to what’ll come from this.”  His eyes fastened on a figure that, separating itself from the group around young Holmes, now dashed frantically, hatless, and with dishevelled hair to Mr. and Mrs. Thornton.  “Who’s that, Harry?  He came down on the train with you—­know him?”

“He’s only some newspaper guy or other,” answered Pale Face Harry mechanically, his eyes still roving wildly over the scene around him.

“Oh, is that all!” ejaculated Madison with a little gasp.  “I’ve already exhausted my thanks to Santa Claus and here he comes with another package done up in dinky pink paper tied with baby ribbon—­and the gold platter it’s on goes with it!”

“What d’ye mean?” asked Pale Face Harry heavily.

The newspaper man, the instinct of his calling now rising paramount to all else, had left the Thorntons and was tearing for the wagon track on his way to the station and the telegraph office like one possessed.

“By to-morrow morning,” said Madison softly, “the missionaries will be explaining this to the Esquimaux at Oo-lou-lou, the near-invalids in California will be packing their trunks, likewise those in the languid shade of the Florida palms; they’ll be listing it on the stock exchange in New York, and the breath of Eden will waft itself o’er plain and valley until—­” he stopped suddenly, as Mrs. Thornton’s voice reached him.

“I am going to walk back, Robert.”

“Yes; but, Naida,” Thornton protested, “you’re not strong enough yet.”

“Don’t you understand?” she cried, half laughing, half sobbing.  “There is no ’yet’—­I am cured, dear—­all cured.  I’m well and strong.  Try to understand, Robert—­oh, I’m so happy, so—­so thankful.  I know it’s miraculous, that it’s almost impossible to believe—­but try to understand.”

“I am trying to,” said Thornton numbly, watching her as she moved about.  “And it seems as though I were in a dream—­that this isn’t real—­that you’re not real.”

“It’s not a dream,” she said.  “Oh, I’m so strong again.  Why, Robert, it would be just as absurd for me to be wheeled back in that chair as for you to be—­and besides I have no right to do that now.  It would be a sacrilege, profaning the gratitude in my heart—­I am cured and these poor people here must see that I am cured—­Robert, we must leave that wheel-chair here that others, poor sufferers who will come now, will see and believe and be cured too.  And, Robert, in some way, I do not know just how, we who are rich must do something to help people to get here.”