“No word of excommunication”

“Good news travels fast,” he said sarcastically.

Ingrid ran a hand through her short dark hair and sighed. “I just heard via the grapevine. Isaac purchased a bus ticket this morning.”

Matt nodded curtly, not looking up, though he wasn't taking in a single word of print. His first thought was to ask when Sarah was leaving, but he stifled it ruthlessly with common sense. It was over. There was no point in trying to see her again. She didn't love him enough to leave her folk and he loved her too much to ask. Time for any smart bachelor to cut bait and run. Actually, it was past time for that. He never should have let himself get so involved in the first place. But he'd been so in need of something, anything that would help life make sense again, and there had been Sarah, the embodiment of everything he thought had gone out of life—goodness, innocence, faith.

Maybe Julia had been right. Maybe he had been trying to compensate. Maybe he had been trying to withdraw from the world, wrapping himself in the cocoon of Sarah Troyers homemade skirts.

“I'll be going back to the Cities at the end of the week,' he announced.

Ingrid said nothing. She probably knew he was not well enough to return to work, but she also knew better than to protest.

Outside the wind howled and hurled rain against the panes of the bay window. In the snug warmth of the library, the Righteous Brothers sang the mournful opening bars of “Unchained Melody.” Matt folded his Star-Tribune with quick jerky movements and hurled it across the room in a burst of temper. In the front hall, Blossom sent up a howl as someone began pounding on the door.

Ingrid had just pushed herself up out of her seat when Sarah came rushing into the library, looking like the headless horseman had chased her all the way to Thornewood. Her kapp was gone. Her hair hung loose in wet strings, and rainwater dripped off the end of her reddened nose. The heavy black cloak she wore smeUed of wet wool and horses.

“Sarah!” Ingrid said on a gasp.

Sarah looked right past her, her terrified gaze focusing on Matt. “Matt!” she exclaimed, her eyes huge in a pale face. “It's Jacob. He's terribly ill. You have to come. Please say youTl come right away!”

“Of course, I'll come,” he murmured, so stunned by her sudden appearance that he had yet to react.

“Now!” she insisted, flying across the room to grab his hand and pull him up off the couch. Her fingers were like icicles, wet and white and painfully cold. She tugged him like an anxious child, sobbing, teeth chattering. “There's no time to lose! I'm afraid. Oh, mein Gott, I'm so afraid he's going to die!”

She began crying then and Matt instinctively pulled her into his arms, offering her his warmth and strength for an instant… and his love. It poured out of him unchecked, and he squeezed her tightly, not caring that her cape was wet or that her hair was dripping on his cashmere sweater. The hurt he had been struggling with was instantly set aside, concern for Sarah and for Jacob overriding all else.

“Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered, stroking a hand over the damp tangle of her hair. “Everything's gong to be all right. Tell me what happened.”

“Jacob … he's ill. So hot … in such pain. I'm going to lose him,” she whispered, trembling violently in Matt's arms. Her legs and arms ached from clinging to the back of the horse she had ridden there bareback, and now her knees threatened to give way beneath her. She was scared out of her wits thinking about Jacob, thinking about how they had waited too long to try to save her own little Peter. “Please, Matt, she sobbed, sagging against him. “He's going to die!”

“Nobody's going to die,” Matt said firmly, standing her back from him. “Do you understand me, Sarah? Nobody's going to die.” He grabbed the jacket Ingrid tossed him and shrugged into it, his eyes never leaving Sarah's. “Not as long as I can prevent it,”

Ingrid drove because she knew the way and had experience driving on gravel. The horse Sarah had galloped to Thornewood on had been hastily locked in the barn. No time had been spared to see to the animal's needs because Jacob's-life hung in the balance.

The trio burst in on the Maust family like marauders, flinging back the kitchen door and storming into the house in a swirl of rain and wind that made the lanterns flicker in protest. A stunned Isaac raced into the kitchen to meet them, his feet bare, his suspenders dangling.

“Sarah! What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a thunderous voice. “Why do you bring these people into my home? How dare you-”

“I dare because Jacob is dying!” she shouted in his face.

“Nonsense! The boy has been to see a doctor—”

“I won't take the time to argue with you on that point, Mr. Maust,” Matt said, shouldering his way past Sarahs father. “Sarah's word is good enough for me. Where's the boy?”

“Upstairs. Hurry!” Sarah shouted, well beyond the verge of hysteria. “Hurry!”

Ignoring the stunned faces of the rest of Sarahs family, Matt turned and took the stairs as fast as he could, blocking out his own pain with the need to get to Jacob as quickly as possible. Footsteps rumbled like thunder behind him. At the top of the stairs he hesitated, uncertain of which direction to go and Sarah nearly bowled him over, running into him and shoving him down the hall.

In Jacob's room, he set about the business of examining the boy as best he could without benefit of any of the tools of his trade. The old cool settled inside him. His hands were steady. His mind functioned with the flawless precision of a computer, absorbing information, analyzing it, considering and discarding options and answers. He rattled off questions in rapid succession.

“When did he first become ill? How long has his fever been this high? Is he taking any medications?”

Anna Maust answered him in a thin, trembling voice as she stood beside the bed looking down on her youngest with tear-filled, worried eyes.

“The doctor said flu is all it is,” she murmured almost to herself. “He prescribed aspirin.”

Matt didn't waste energy commenting on Coswell's diagnosis or on the idiocy of prescribing aspirin to a child with a high fever in view of the latest findings on the dangers of Reye's syndrome. He concentrated on Jacob, checking his pupils, feeling glands, running his sensitive hands gently over the boy's belly, frowning as his lightest touch brought groans of pain from Jacob.

Sarah fell to her knees beside the bed on the far side, sobbing, reaching out to touch the child she had always loved as her own. Ingrid and the rest of the Maust family stood back, watching, silent except for Isaac.

“We don't want you here, English,” he hissed vehemently. “We have a doctor. Your interference—”

Matt straightened from the bed and wheeled on the man, his face a mask of stone. “My interference is going to save your son's life if we can get him to a hospital fast enough. His appendix is on the verge of rupturing.”

Isaac Maust turned white, the seriousness of the situation penetrating his anger. He stared into Matt Thome's eyes and saw nothing but the grim truth.

“What can we do?” he asked.

“Pray.” Matt was already in motion.

There was no phone to call for an ambulance or time to wait for one. Jacob was wrapped in the blankets from his bed and carried out to the back of Ingrid s station wagon, where Matt and Sarah climbed in beside him. Ingrid dove behind the wheel and the elder Mausts settled in the backseat, slamming the doors as the car's wheels spun on the gravel driveway.

Jesse Community Hospital sat on the north edge of town, a modern U-shaped one-story structure of red brick that housed a nursing home in one wing and a small number of hospital beds in the other. There were no more than five cars in the lot. Ingrid halted the station wagon at the glass doors emblazoned with the word Emergency in red, and Matt led the way into the hospital with Jacob curling against him in his arms, the boy moaning and crying. Sarah ran beside him, her fist gripping the sleeve of Matt's leather jacket, tears streaming down her cheeks. The nurse on duty, a stout, middle-aged woman with a puff-ball of red hair and a name tag that proclaimed her to be Velma Johansen, R.N., rushed around from behind the desk to meet them.

“I'm Dr. Thorne from County General in Minneapolis,” Matt announced in a voice that rang with authority. “We've got a boy here with an appendix that's just about ready to blow. I want him prepped for surgery stat. Where can I scrub?”

“Down that hall on the left, Doctor,” Nurse Johansen answered efficiently, pointing with one hand and yanking a gurney away from the wall with the other. “I'll call the nurse-anesthetist. Well have him ready for you as soon as possible.”

“Make it sooner,” Matt barked, bolting down the hall.

He nearly collided with Dr. Coswell as the older man stepped out of an office to see what all the shouting was about. Coswell hefted his bulk out of the way at the last instant, jerking his cigarette out of his mouth.

“Dr. Thome! What brings you here?”

“I don't have time to chat, Coswell,” Matt said, shrugging out of his jacket. “I've got an emergency appendectomy to perform.”

“You can't just come in here and take over my hospital!” Coswell bellowed, incredulous.

Matt gave him a cool look. “Watch me.”

“This is completely irregular!” Coswell exclaimed, his face turning an unhealthy shade of purple. “I won't stand for it!” he said, his smoker's cough choking off the end of his sentence.

“Yeah, well, I'll cut that kid open with a pocketknife before I let you get near him with a scalpel, so you'd better get used to the idea,” Matt said. He left Coswell sputtering and went to ready himself to save Jacob Maust s life.