shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like a pair of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he never forgets the down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he has a genius for remembering the mill-children. These are his dear and special charge.

Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live in a small town; he says you can save as many lives in a little town as a big one, and folks need you more. He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as being merely poor people with money; an idealist, who will tell you bluntly that revelations haven't ceased; they've only changed for the better.

Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the heart of a little child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon my shoulder and tell me to my teeth that heaven is a habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I do not always agree with him; but along with everybody else in Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses that God has shown me, I do not count it least that this good and kind man was sent in our need, to heal and befriend the broken and friendless waifs and strays who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest Rooms.

And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor fortuitously was I uprooted from my place and my people and sent hither to impinge upon the lives of many who were to be dearer to me than all that had gone before; I was not idly sent to know and love Westmoreland, and Mary Virginia, and Laurence; and, above all, Slippy McGee, whom we of Appleboro call the Butterfly Man.

CHAPTER IIToC

THE COMING OF SLIPPY MCGEE

On a cold gray morning in December two members of my flock, Poles who spoke but little English and that little very badly, were on their way to their daily toil in the canning factory. It is a long walk from the Poles' quarters to the factory, and the workpeople must start early, for one is fined half an hour's time if one is five minutes late. The short-cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the mill district—for which cause we bury a yearly toll of the children of the poor.

Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water tank, is a grade crossing where so many terrible things have happened that the colored people call that place Dead Man's Crossin' and warn you not to go by there of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming out to show themselves after dark. If you must pass it then you would better turn your coat inside out, pull down your sleeves over your hands, and be very careful to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a specific against most ha'nts, though by no means able to scare away all of them. Those at Dead Man's Crossin' are peculiarly malignant and hard to scare. Maum Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow, and waving both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as best she could without them.

Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin', the workmen stumbled over a man lying beside the tracks; his clothing was torn to shreds, he was wet with the heavy night dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly congealed blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peering at this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early morning, they thought he was dead like most of the others found there.

For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn't be better to leave him there to be found and removed by folks with more time at their disposal. One doesn't like to lose time and be consequently fined, on account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp; particularly when Christmas is drawing near and money so much needed that every penny counts.

The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again. Humanity prevailing, the Poles looked about for help, but as yet the place was quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter off the Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon it, and made straight for the Parish House; when accidents such as this happened to men such as this, weren't the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish House people? Indeed, there wasn't any place else for them, unless one excepted the rough room at the jail; and the average small town jail—ours wasn't any exception to the rule—is a place where a decent veterinary would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin, which they had found lying partly under him.

We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of misfortune, so he was carried upstairs to the front Guest Room, fortunately just then empty. The Poles turned over to me the heavy package found with him, stolidly requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they had to do, and they had no further interest in him. Nobody had any interest in one of the unknown tramps who got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man's Crossin'.

The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some strenuous days and nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at the knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner—very, very feebly—and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.

The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity, then his eyes came to Clélie and myself, but he did not return the greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently, very feebly, he tried to move,—and found himself a cripple. He fell back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his lips—a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself. Clélie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful, inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and falling to his choking gasps.

"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a soul.

He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered, heartsick, if I had