Slowly, cautiously, with his head swimming lightly on ahead of him and

a queer gasp of emptiness in the region of his chest that seemed to

need a great deal of breath, he managed a passage to the door, looked

down the long white corridor with its open doors and cheerful voices,

saw a pair of stairs to the right quite near by, and with his steadying

hands on the cool white wall slid along the short space to the top

step. It seemed an undertaking to get down that first step, but when

that was accomplished he was out of sight and he sat down and slid

slowly the rest of the way, wondering why he felt so rotten.

At the foot of the long stairs there was a door, and strange it was

made so heavy! He wondered a nurse could swing it open, just a mere

girl! But he managed it at last, almost winded, and stumbled out on the

portico that gave to the sea, a wide blue stretch before him. He

stopped, startled, as if he had unexpectedly sighted the heavenly

strand, and gazed blinking at the stretch of blue with the wide white

shore and the boom of an organ following the lapping of each white

crested wave. Those palm trees certainly made it look queer like Saxy's

Pilgrim's Progress picture book. Then the panic for home and his

business came upon him and he slid weakly down the shallow white steps,

and crunched his white feet on the gravel wincing. He had just taken to

the grass at the edge and was managing better than he had hoped when a

neat little coupe rounded the curve of the drive, and his favorite

doctor came swinging up to the steps, eyeing him keenly. Billy started

to run, and fell in a crumpled heap, white and scared and crying real

tears, weak, pink tears!

"Why Billy! What are you doing here?" The stern loving voice of his

favorite doctor hung over him like a knife that was going to cut him

off forever from life and light and forgiveness and all that he counted

dear.

But Billy stopped crying.

"Nothin," he said, "I just come out fer a walk!"

The doctor smiled.

"But I didn't tell you you might, Billy boy!"

"Had to," said Billy.

"Well, you'll find you'll have to go back again, Billy. Come!" and the

doctor stooped his broad strong shoulders to pick up the boy. But Billy

beat him off weakly: "Say, now, Doc, wait a minute," he pleaded, "It's jus' this way. I

simply gotta get back home t'day. I'm a very 'mportant witness

in a murder case, See? My bes' friend in the world is bein' tried fer

life, an' he ain't guilty, an' I'm the only one that knows it fer sure,

an' can prove it, an' I gotta be there. Why, Doc, the trial's going

on now an' I ain't there! It ud drive me crazy to go back an' lay

in that soft bed like a reg'lar sissy, an' know he's going to be

condemned. I put it to you, Doc, as man to man, would you stand fer a

thing like that?"




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