Mostly the news we gets of Dan is about troubles he's had.
But sometimes we hear of gents he's helped out when they was sick, and
things like that. They ain't nobody like Dan when a gent is down sick,
I'll tell a man!"
The doctor sighed.
He said: "And do I understand you to say that the girl and this
man--Whistling Dan, as you call him--are intimately and sentimentally
related?"
"She loves him," said Daniels slowly. "She loves the ground he walks on
and the places where he's been."
"But, sir, it would seem probable from your own reasoning that the
return of the man, in this case, will not be unwelcome to her."
"Reason?" broke out Daniels bitterly. "What the hell has reason got to
do with Whistling Dan? Man, man! if Barry was to come back d'you suppose
he'd remember that he'd once told Kate he loved her? Doc, I know him as
near as any man can know him. I tell you, he thinks no more of her
than--than the wild geese think of her. If old Joe dies because Dan is
away--well, Cumberland is an old man anyway. But how could I stand to
see Barry pass Kate by with an empty eye, the way he'd do if he come
back? I'd want to kill him, and I'd get bumped off tryin' it, like as
not. And what would it do to Kate? It'd kill her, Doc, as sure as you're
born."
"Your assumption being," murmured the doctor, "that if she never sees
the man again she will eventually forget him."
"D'you forget a knife that's sticking into you? No, she won't forget
him.
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