SERGEANT WILLIAM PATTERSON. 315 



I followed her to a back room, and found a child of 

 about six years lying on a bed and apparently asleep, 

 but twitching violently. Then came a muscular spasm 

 which doubled the little sufferer up, and I was alarmed. 



"Has a doctor seen the child?" 



"No; I thought she'd get over it without the expense 

 of a doctor, for I am very poor. My husband was hurt 

 a year ago by a fall down a shaft, and died last October. 

 I've worked when I could get work, but have not been 

 strong enough to do much. It's a hard world for the 

 poor and weak, and if my little girl goes from me I want 

 to go, too." 



I don't know that it did any good, but I took the girl 

 in my arms, and walked the floor with her, trying to help 

 her unconscious struggles. When the spasm passed I 

 laid her on the bed, and went out to find some one to go 

 for a doctor. I found a man going to Potosi on foot, 

 and told him to send Dr. Gibson out at the earliest mo- 

 ment, and returned to the house. If the doctor would 

 only come, and let me get out! The time passed so 

 slowly. I was not fitted by nature to be either a doctor 

 or an undertaker, and suffering which I could not relieve 

 was a thing to be left to itself; but I could not leave it. 

 The child had several spasms, and the night passed over 

 a little cabin with sorrowing mother and a dying child 

 in the arms of a rough, untrained fellow, who would help 

 both if he only knew how to do it, but who wished him- 

 self a thousand miles away. 



It had never occurred to me that I would be missed, 

 so busy was my mind with the misery in the cabin, and 

 when a jangle of sleigh bells stopped in front of the cabin 

 long after midnight I mentally said: "There comes the 

 doctor." 



I was walking the floor with the child in my arms, 



