By this time Robert’s head was bent again, and his face buried in his hands.

“My turn next,” said James.  “I haven’t much to say—­only this.  After mother died I took typhoid fever.  Here I was with no one to wait on me.  Robert came and nursed me.  He was the most faithful, tender, gentle nurse ever a man had.  The doctor said Robert saved my life.  I don’t suppose any of the rest of us here can say we have saved a life.”

Edith wiped away her tears and sprang up impulsively.

“Years ago,” she said, “there was a poor, ambitious girl who had a voice.  She wanted a musical education and her only apparent chance of obtaining it was to get a teacher’s certificate and earn money enough to have her voice trained.  She studied hard, but her brains, in mathematics at least, weren’t as good as her voice, and the time was short.  She failed.  She was lost in disappointment and despair, for that was the last year in which it was possible to obtain a teacher’s certificate without attending Queen’s Academy, and she could not afford that.  Then her oldest brother came to her and told her he could spare enough money to send her to the conservatory of music in Halifax for a year.  He made her take it.  She never knew till long afterwards that he had sold the beautiful horse which he loved like a human creature, to get the money.  She went to the Halifax conservatory.  She won a musical scholarship.  She has had a happy life and a successful career.  And she owes it all to her brother Robert—­”

But Edith could go no further.  Her voice failed her and she sat down in tears.  Margaret did not try to stand up.

“I was only five when my mother died,” she sobbed.  “Robert was both father and mother to me.  Never had child or girl so wise and loving a guardian as he was to me.  I have never forgotten the lessons he taught me.  Whatever there is of good in my life or character I owe to him.  I was often headstrong and willful, but he never lost patience with me.  I owe everything to Robert.”

Suddenly the little teacher rose with wet eyes and crimson cheeks.

“I have something to say, too,” she said resolutely.  “You have spoken for yourselves.  I speak for the people of White Sands.  There is a man in this settlement whom everybody loves.  I shall tell you some of the things he has done.”

“Last fall, in an October storm, the harbor lighthouse flew a flag of distress.  Only one man was brave enough to face the danger of sailing to the lighthouse to find out what the trouble was.  That was Robert Monroe.  He found the keeper alone with a broken leg; and he sailed back and made—­yes, made the unwilling and terrified doctor go with him to the lighthouse.  I saw him when he told the doctor he must go; and I tell you that no man living could have set his will against Robert Monroe’s at that moment.

“Four years ago old Sarah Cooper was to be taken to the poorhouse.  She was broken-hearted.  One man took the poor, bed-ridden, fretful old creature into his home, paid for medical attendance, and waited on her himself, when his housekeeper couldn’t endure her tantrums and temper.  Sarah Cooper died two years afterwards, and her latest breath was a benediction on Robert Monroe—­the best man God ever made.