There was an unusual eagerness in his hard face, an evident desire to make up to Sally in one way for what he was depriving her of in another.  He was more talkative than at any time since coming to the hospital, and he dilated with satisfaction on the joys that awaited their home-coming.

“May I have a little talk with you before you go?” asked Miss Fletcher.

He flashed on her a quick look of suspicion, but her calm, impassive face told him nothing.  She was a pretty woman, and Pop had evidently recognized the fact from the start.

“Wal, I’ll come now,” he said, rising reluctantly; “but, Sal, you git yer clothes on an’ be ready to start time I git back.  I ain’t anxious to stay round these here diggin’s no longer’n need be.  Besides, that thar railroad car mought take a earlier start.  You be ready ag’in I git back.”

For an hour and a quarter Miss Fletcher was shut up in the linen closet with the old man.  What arguments and persuasions she brought to bear are not known.  Occasionally his voice could be heard in loud and angry dissent, but when at last they emerged he looked like some old king of the jungle that has been captured and tamed.  His shoulders drooped, his one arm hung limply by his side, and his usually restless eyes were bent upon the floor.

Without a word he strode back to the room where Sally in her misfit clothes was waiting for him.

“Come along o’ me, Sal,” he commanded sternly as he picked up his carpet sack.  “Leave your things whar they be.”

Silently they passed out of the ward, down the stairway, through the long vaultlike corridor to the superintendent’s room.  Once there he flung back his rusty coat and ripped the last bill but one from its hiding place.

“That thar is fer my gal,” he said defiantly to the superintendent.  “She’ll git one the fust day of every month.  Give her the larnin’ she’s so hell-bent on, stuff her plumb full on it.  An’ ef you let ennything happen to her”—­his brows lowered threateningly—­“I’ll come back an’ blow yer whole blame’ horspittle into eternity!”

“Pop!” Sally pleaded, “Pop!”

But his emotions were at high tide and he did not heed her.  Pushing her roughly aside, he strode back to the entrance hall, and was about to pick up his carpet sack when his gaze was suddenly arrested by the great marble figure that bends its thorn-crowned head in pity over the unhappy and the pain-racked mortals that pass beneath its outstretched hands.

“You ain’t goin’ to leave me like this, Pop?” begged Sally.  “Ef you take it so hard, I’ll go back, an’ I’ll go willin’.  Jus’ say the word, Pop, an’ I’ll go!”

The old mountaineer’s one hand closed on the girl’s bony arm in a tight clasp, his shoulders heaved, and his massive features worked, but his gaze never left the calm, pitying face of the Saviour overhead.  He had followed his child without a tremor into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but at the entrance of this new life, where he must let her go alone, his courage failed and his spirit faltered.  His dominant will, hitherto the only law he knew, was in mortal combat with a new and unknown force that for the first time had entered his life.