to his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education,
and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry,
inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridge
built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand yards
long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They had only
one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of Nathan
Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a
reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in
Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety."

Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained
unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the resident
doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one by
illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed
and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the gratitude of
all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, to Tekewani,
the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic.

That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg where
she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, pining
for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for "the open
world," as she called it. So it was that, to her father's dismay and joy
in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things behind her; and
had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a few cents in her
pocket.

Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as
fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and
children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered was
marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the