is what he found!"

Ellen stood looking at the pair—her brawny husband, himself "completely done" an hour before, now sitting on the edge of the couch with his new patient's hand in his, his face wearing an expression of keen interest, not a sign of fatigue in his manner; the exhausted young foreigner in his ragged clothing lying on the luxurious couch, his pale face standing out like a fine cameo against the blue velvet of the pillow under his dark head. If a thought of possible contamination for her home's belongings entered her mind it found no lodgment there, so pitiful was her heart.

"Is the room ready upstairs?" Burns asked presently, when he had again noted the feeble action of the pulse under his fingers. "What he needs is rest and sleep, and plenty of both. Like the most of us he's kept up while he had to, and now he's gone to pieces absolutely. To-morrow we can send him to the hospital, perhaps, but for to-night—"

"The room is ready. I sent Cynthia up at once."

"Bless you, you never fail me, do you? Well—we may as well be on our way. He's nearly asleep now."

Burns stood up, throwing off his coat. But Ellen remonstrated.

"Dear, you are so tired to-night. Let me call Jim over to help you carry him up."

A derisive laugh answered her. "Great Cæsar, Len! The chap's a mere bag of bones—and if he were twice as heavy he'd be no weight for me. Jim Macauley would howl at the idea, and no wonder. Go ahead and open the doors, please, and I'll have him up in a jiffy."

He stooped over the couch, swung the slender figure up into his powerful arms, speaking reassuringly to the eyes which slowly opened in half-stupefied alarm. "It's all right, little Hungary. We're going to put you to bed, like the small lost boy you are. Bring his fiddle, Len—he won't want that out of his sight."

He strode away with his burden, and marched up the stairs as if he were carrying his own two-year-old son. Arrived in the small, comfortable little room at the back of the house he laid his charge on the bed, and stood looking down at him.

"Len, I'll have to go the whole figure," he said—and said it not as if the task he was about to impose upon himself were one that irked him. "Get me hot water and soap and towels, will you? And an old pair of pajamas. I can't put him to bed in his rags."

"Shall I send for Amy?" questioned his wife, quite as if she understood the uselessness of remonstrance.

"Not much. Amy's making out bills for me to-night, we'll not interrupt the good work. Put some bath-ammonia in the water, please—and have it hot."

Half an hour later he called her in to see the work of his hands. She had brought him one of his surgical aprons with the bath equipment. With his sleeves rolled up, his apron well splashed, his coppery hair more or less in disarray from the occasional thrustings of a soapy hand, and his face flushed and eager like a healthy boy's, Red Pepper Burns stood grinning down at his patient. Little Hungary lay in the clean white bed, his pale face shining with soap and happiness, his arms upon the coverlet encased in the blue and white sleeves of Burns's pajamas, the sleeves neatly turned back to accommodate the shortness of his arms. The workman turned to Ellen as she came in.

"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?"

"Not a one that I ever heard of. Plenty in the city, though. The waiter at the Arcadia, where I get lunch when I'm at the hospital, is a Magyar. By Jove, there's an idea! I'll bring Louis out, if Hungary can't get into the hospital to-morrow—and I warn you he probably can't. I shouldn't want him to take a twelve-mile ambulance ride in this weather. That touch of fever may mean simple exhaustion, and it may mean look out for pneumonia, after all the exposure he's had. I'd give something to know how it came into his crazy head to stand and fiddle outside a private house in a January storm. Why didn't he try a cigar shop or some other warm spot where he could pass the hat? That's what Louis must find out for me, eh? Len, that was great music of his, wasn't it? The fellow ought to have a job in a hotel orchestra. Louis and I between us might get him one."

Burns went to bed still working on this problem, and Ellen rejoiced that it had superseded the anxieties of the past day. Next morning he was early at the little foreigner's bedside, to find him resting quietly, the fever gone, and only the intense fatigue remaining, the cure for which was simply rest and food.

"Shall we let him stay till he's fit?" Burns asked his wife.

"Of course. Both Cynthia and Amy are much interested, and between them he will have all he needs."

"And I'll bring Louis out, if I have to pay for a waiter to take his place," promised Burns.

He was as good as his word. When he returned that afternoon from the daily visit to the city hospital, where he had always many patients, he brought with him in the powerful roadster which he drove himself a dark-faced, pointed moustached countryman of little Hungary, who spoke tolerable English, and was much pleased and flattered to be of service to the big doctor whom he was accustomed to serve in his best manner.

Taken to the bedside, Louis gazed down at its occupant with condescending but comprehending eyes, and spoke a few words which