"I passed it back to him. 'I don't want this. Five dollars is my fee. If you haven't anything smaller, wait till I come to-morrow, then you can give me a ten. I'm ready to go now; lead the way out.'
"Next morning I went to see him again. Bill, by arrangement, met me at the corner of the street and took me to the wounded man's room, in and out, by the same route we had taken the night before. I found he had passed a good night, had no fever, and was all right. I left some medicine and directions, got my ten dollars, and never went again.
"Last month, some two days before Christmas, I was sitting here reading—it was after twelve o'clock—when I heard a tap on the window-pane. I pushed aside the shade and looked out a thick-set man motioned me to open the door. When he got inside the hall he said:
"'Ain't forgot me again, have you, "Doc"!'
"'No, you're the man I fixed up in Washington Street last fall.'
"'Yea, that's right, "Doc"; that's me. Can I come in? I got something for you.'
"I brought him in and he sat down on that sofa. Then he pulled out a package from his inside pocket.
"'"Doc,"' he began, 'I was thinking to-night of what you done for me and how you did it, and how decent you've been about it always, and I thought maybe you wouldn't feel offended if I brought you this bunch of scarfpins to take your pick from'—and he unwrapped the bundle. 'There's a pearl one—that might please you—and here's another that sparkles—take your pick, "Doc." It would please me a heap if you would'—and he handed me half a dozen scarfpins stuck in a flannel rag—some of them of great value.
"I didn't know what to say at first. I couldn't get mad. I saw he was in dead earnest, and I saw, too, that it was pure gratitude on his part that prompted him to do it. That's a kind of human feeling you don't want to crush out in a man. When he's got that, no matter what else he lacks, you've got something to build on. I pulled out the pearl pin from the others. I wanted to get time to make up my mind as to what I really ought to do.
"'Very nice pin,' I said.