— XVI —
A FLY IN THE OINTMENT
The days passed. And with the days, morning, noon and night, they came by almost every train, the sick and suffering, the lame, the paralytics and the maimed—a steady influx by twos and threes and fours from north over the Canadian boundary line, from the far west, and from the southernmost tip of the Florida coast. No longer on the company's schedule was Needley a flag station—it was a regular stop, and its passenger traffic returns were benign and pleasing things in the auditor's office. And it was an accustomed sight now, many times a day—what had once been a strange, rare spectacle—that slow procession wending its way from the station to the town, some carried, some limping upon crutches, all snatching at hope of life and health and happiness again. Needley, perforce, had become a vast boarding house, as it were—there were few homes indeed that did not harbor their quota of those who sought the "cure."
But there were others too who came—who were not sick—who had not faith—who came to laugh and peer and peek. Pleasure yachts dropped their anchors in the cove around the head-
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