BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
"It's a dark night, Jenny," said Dr. Putnam to his wife, as he tied on a pair of coarse socks over his boots.
"Dark and cold too, David," said Mrs. Putnam.
"Don't fret, little woman. I've been out in many a worse. I only spoke of it because I doubted whether or no I should take the lantern; but I think I will, since it won't be lighter before I come back."
"Sam!" called Mrs. Putnam, and a curly dark head was thrust in at the door, "fetch father the lantern; light it first."
The Putnam children were trained to prompt obedience. Sam was almost sixteen, but he made neither delay nor objection. When he brought in the old-fashioned tin lantern you saw that he was a tall boy, with an earnest, pleasant face. He followed his father out of the door, hung the lantern by the side of the wagon seat, and tucked in the worn and ragged buffalo-robe as carefully as possible. His father nodded and smiled as he drove off. Sam stopped a moment to inspect the weather: the air was bitter enough, and not a star to be seen.
"Father'll have an awful cold ride," he said, as he re-entered the house; "the wind's northeast, right in his face, and everything is frozen up hard and fast."
"Poor father! he has a hard time winters," sighed Mrs. Putnam.
And indeed he did. A country doctor's life is hard enough; day and night he must drive, in all weather and all seasons; nor does there come to him a time of rest and vacation, for people are always ill somewhere. Dr. Putnam had even a harder time than many others, for the district where he lived was among the hills and forests of upper New Hampshire, where roads were rough, winters bitter, inhabitants few, and doctors scarce. But he had a wife and three children to support, and he could not help himself. Besides, he was a hardy, brave, kindly man, and no night was too stormy, no road too long, if sickness called him. He had always been well till the year before, when an attack of pleurisy took hold of him sharply, and warned him that flesh and blood can not endure more than a given amount of exposure.