“I want to thank you for all you’ve done!” she said.  “I’m only a stranger and you’ve been very kind.  But now it’s over and I will not hinder you any longer.”

She wanted to be alone.  They could see that.  Yet it wrung their hearts to leave her so.

“You will want to make some arrangements,” growled the doctor.

“Oh!  I had forgotten!” The girl’s hand fluttered to her heart and her breath gave a quick catch.  “It will have to be very simple,” she said, looking from one to another of them anxiously.  “I haven’t much money left.  Perhaps I could sell something!” She looked desperately around on her little possessions.  “This little cot!  It is new just two weeks ago and he will not need it any more.  It cost twenty dollars!”

Courtland stepped gravely toward her.  “Suppose you leave that to me,” he said, gently.  “I think I know a place where they would look after the matter for you reasonably and let you pay later or take the cot in exchange, you know, anything you wish.  Would you like me to arrange the matter for you?”

“Oh, if you would!” said the girl, wearily.  “But it is asking a great deal of a stranger.”

“It’s nothing.  I can look after it on my way home.  Just tell me what you wish.”

“Oh, the very simplest there is!”—­she caught her breath—­“white if possible, unless it’s more expensive.  But it doesn’t matter, anyway, now.  There’ll have to be a place somewhere, too.  Some time I will take him back and let him lie by father and mother.  I can’t now.  It’s two hundred miles away.  But there won’t need to be but one carriage.  There’s only me to go.”

He looked his compassion, but only asked, “Is there anything else?”

“Any special clergyman?” asked the doctor, kindly.

She shook her head sadly.  “We hadn’t been to church yet.  I was too tired.  If you know of a minister who would come.”

“It’s tough luck,” said the doctor again as they went down-stairs together, “to see a nice, likely little chap like that taken away so.  And I operated this afternoon on a hardened old reprobate around the corner here, that’s played the devil to everybody, and he’s going to pull through!  It does seem strange.  It ain’t the way I should run the universe, but I’m thundering glad I ’ain’t got the job!”

Courtland walked on through the busy streets, thinking that sentence over.  He had a dim current of inner perception that suggested there might be another way of looking at the matter; a possibility that the wicked old reprobate had yet something more to learn of life before he went beyond its choices and opportunities; a conviction that if he were called to go he had rather be the little child in his purity than the old man in his deviltry.

The sudden cutting down of this lovely child had startled and shocked him.  The bereavement of the girl cut him to the heart as if she had belonged to him.  It brought the other world so close.  It made what had hitherto seemed the big worth-while things of life look so small and petty, so ephemeral!  Had he always been giving himself utterly to things that did not count, or was this a perspective all out of proportion, a distorted brain again, through nervous strain and over-exertion?