“Comfy, eh?” he observed briefly.

“Absolutely, I should say, poor dear.”

“Ah, you wouldn’t have called him that before the bath.  But he is rather a dear now, isn’t he?  And I think he’s younger than I did downstairs.  Not over eighteen, at the most, but fully forty in the experiences and hardships that have brought him here.  Well, we’ll go away and let him rest.  Wish I knew the Hungarian for ‘good-night,’ don’t you?  Anyway, if he knows any prayers he’ll say ’em, I’ll venture.”

The dark eyes were watching him intently as he spoke, as if their owner longed to know what this kind angel in the form of a big American stranger was saying to him.  And when, in leaving him, Burns once more laid an exploring touch upon his wrist, the two thin hands suddenly clutched the strong one and bore it weakly to lips which kissed it fervently.

“Well, that’s rather an eloquent thank-you, eh?” murmured Burns, as he patted the hands in reply.  “No doubt but he’s grateful.  Put the fiddle where he can see it in the morning, will you, honey?  Open the window pretty well:  I’ve covered him thoroughly, and he has a touch of fever to keep him warm.  Good-night, little Hungary.  Luck’s with you to-night, to get into this lady’s house.”

Downstairs by the fireside once more, the signs of his late occupation removed, Burns stretched out an arm for his wife.

“Come sit beside me in the Retreat,” he invited, using the name he had long ago given to the luxurious blue couch where he was accustomed, since his marriage, to rest and often to catch a needed nap.  He drew the winsome figure close within his arm, resting his red head against the dark one below it.  “I don’t seem to feel particularly tired, now,” he observed.  “Curious, isn’t it?  Fatigue, as I’ve often noticed, is more mental than physical—­with most of us.  Your ditch-digger is tired in his back and arms, but the ordinary person is merely tired because his mind tells him he is.”

“You are never too tired to rouse yourself for one patient more,” was Ellen’s answer to this.  “The last one seems to cure you of the one before.”

Burns’s hearty laugh shook them both.  “You can’t make me out such an enthusiast in my profession as that.  I turned away two country calls to-night—­too lazy to make ’em.”

“But you would have gone if they couldn’t have found anybody else.”

“That goes without saying—­no merit in that.  The ethics of the profession have to be lived up to, curse ’em as we may, at times.  Len, how are we to get to know something about little Hungary upstairs?  Those eyes of his are going to follow me into my dreams to-night.”

“I suppose there are Hungarians in town?”