mind if you tell me so; but I am not going to keep quiet and see you ruin yourself. And that’s how we all feel.”

“I am not ruining myself,” answered Trescott.

“No, maybe you are not exactly ruining yourself,” said Twelve, slowly, “but you are doing yourself a great deal of harm. You have changed from being the leading doctor in town to about the last one. It is mainly because there are always a large number of people who are very thoughtless fools, of course, but then that doesn’t change the condition.”

A man who had not heretofore spoken said, solemnly, “It’s the women.”

“Well, what I want to say is this,” resumed Twelve: “Even if there are a lot of fools in the world, we can’t see any reason why you should ruin yourself by opposing them. You can’t teach them anything, you know.”

“I am not trying to teach them anything.” Trescott smiled wearily. “I—It is a matter of—well——”

“And there are a good many of us that admire you for it immensely,” interrupted Twelve; “but that isn’t going to change the minds of all those ninnies.”

“It’s the women,” stated the advocate of this view again.

“Well, what I want to say is this,” said Twelve. “We want you to get out of this trouble and strike your old gait again. You are simply killing your practice through your infernal pig-headedness. Now this thing is out of the ordinary, but there must be ways to—to beat the game somehow, you see. So we’ve talked it over—about a dozen of us—and, as I say, if you want to tell us to mind our own business, why, go ahead; but we’ve talked it over, and we’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to do is to get Johnson a place somewhere off up the valley, and——”

Trescott wearily gestured. “You don’t know, my friend. Everybody is so afraid of him, they can’t even give him good care. Nobody can attend to him as I do myself.”

“But I have a little no-good farm up beyond Clarence Mountain that I was going to give to Henry,” cried Twelve, aggrieved. “And if you—and if you—if you—through your house burning down, or anything—why, all the boys were prepared to take him right off your hands, and—and——”

Trescott arose and went to the window. He turned his back upon them. They sat waiting in silence. When he returned he kept his face in the shadow. “No, John Twelve,” he said, “it can’t be done.”

There was another stillness. Suddenly a man stirred in his chair.

“Well, then, a public institution——” he began.

“No,” said Trescott; “public institutions are all very good, but he is not going to one.”

In the background of the group old Judge Hagenthorpe was thoughtfully smoothing the polished ivory head of his cane.

XXIV

Trescott loudly stamped the snow from his feet and shook the flakes from his shoulders. When he entered the house he went at once to the dining-room, and then to the sitting-room. Jimmie was there, reading painfully in a large book concerning giraffes and tigers and crocodiles.

“Where is your mother, Jimmie?” asked Trescott.