This kept up all winter. Toward spring the doctor was slowly driving home one day just at twilight, when, as he passed a poor, forlorn cottage, he heard a rap on the window. He stopped his horse at once, got out of his gig, and walked to the door. He knocked, but no one opened, only a voice called, "Come in!"
He entered the shabby room, and found a poor old woman, lying on a miserable bed. The room was bare and cheerless except for the bright fire burning in the small stove, beside which lay a neat pile of wood. The doctor did what he could to ease the poor woman s sufferings, and then asked who lived with her to take care of her.
"Not a soul," she said. "I am all alone. I haven't a chick nor child in all the wide world!"
The doctor looked at the wood near the stove, and wondered to himself how the sick old woman could chop and pile it so nicely; but he said nothing, and she went on sadly:—
"I have had a hard time of it this winter, and I would have died sure if it hadn't been for that blessed boy."
"Why, I thought you lived alone, and had no children!" exclaimed the doctor.
"No more I haven't," she said. "I am all alone by me lone self, as I told ye, but the good Lord has been a-takin' care of me; for a bit of a boy, bless his heart! has been a-comin' here every day this winter for to help me. He chopped the wood the minister sent me, and brought some in here every night, and piled it up like that" (pointing to the sticks in the corner): "and the harder it stormed, the surer he seemed to come. He'd never so much as tell me where he lived, and I only know his name is——"
"Jack?" asked the doctor, with unsteady voice.
"Yes, sir; that's it. Do ye be knowing him, doctor?"
"I think perhaps I do," was the husky answer.