"Let me put it another way!" and now the little doctor arose and stood in the full glow of the fire, while the roar of the wind and the flaring of the red light filled the room with sound and colour. The slim, pale woman looked very weak and small to be the leading actor in this tragic drama of the hills, and the big, stupidly staring man opposite seemed very insignificant as a great sacrifice.
"See, I will put it this way. They call me the Cup-o'-Cold-Water Lady because—I give them all a little drink of water and it makes them better! I made the little Hope boy well; ask Liza, she knows. I gave your Sandy a cup of cold water and it helped his throat—I could have helped him more, poor boy, if he had not gone away. Martin Morley, I want to give you a cup of cold water—oh! please trust me! You must do what I ask you to do—just for one little week. It will be hard, but I will watch with you and share every suffering hour. I will nurse you and care for you as a daughter might, and then, at the end, I believe as truly as God hears me, that you win stand straight and take your place—your place—among men!"
"A charm?" Morley panted, for he was quite overcome by the power exerted over him.
Full of zeal and trust, seizing upon anything to gain her end, Marcia Lowe replied:
"Exactly—a charm! See!" and suddenly she turned to the closet beside the chimney-place; taking out a small bottle she held it up to the light with a glow of reverence upon her uplifted face. "Fifteen tiny grains of this!"
Morley was fascinated.
"Fifteen grains," he repeated, like a man talking in his sleep—"fifteen grains!"
"Yes, yes! and then you must have—faith! You know you always must have faith in charms."
Morley assented to this.
"Will—you—will you try?"