Then Black, taking off his hat, said in a way so simple that the listening ears could not want to be stopped from the sound of the words: “Please, Lord, help us to run, ‘not uncertainly,’ nor fight, as those that ‘beat the air.’ Give us faith and courage for the long way—and bring us to the end of the course, by and by—but not till we have ‘run a good race’—all the way. Amen.”
Still silently, after that, the two went down the trail, now in deep shadow. Red went first, to lead the way, and Black noted with joy that he plunged along down the trail with much his old vigour of step. At almost the bottom he suddenly halted and turned:
“See here, Bob Black,” he said, accusingly. “I thought you were on your way to the station when I saw you this morning. Weren’t you off for those doings at your old Alma Mater you’ve been counting on?”
“I changed my mind.”
“What! After you saw me?”
“Of course.”
There was an instant’s stunned silence on the red-headed doctor’s part, broken by Black’s laugh.
“One would think you never gave up a play or a good dinner or almost anything you’d wanted, to go and set a broken leg—or to reduce a dislocated shoulder before breakfast!”
But when Red finally spoke the hoarseness was back in his voice—only it seemed to be a different sort of hoarseness:
“What did you do it for?”