"It’s a godsend, and that’s no joke," said the peddler. "I’ve got a household liniment here at a quarter for a four-ounce flask that no family can afford to be without. You may think I’m just talking because it’s my business, but, madam, do you know that the regular druggists all about over this country are in a combine not to sell stuff that will keep people in good trim? And why? you may ask me. Why? Because, I say, that it would kill the’r business. Go to one, I dare you, or to a doctor in regular practice, and they will mix up chalk and sweetened water and tell you you’ve got a serious internal complaint, and to keep coming day after day till your pile is exhausted, and then they may tell you the truth and ask you to let ’em alone. I couldn’t begin, madam—I don’t know your name—I say I couldn’t begin to tell you the wonderful cures this liniment has worked all over this part of the state." "What is it good for?" Jane Hemingway’s face had grown suddenly serious. The conversation had caused her thoughts to revert to a certain secret fear she had entertained for several months. "Huh—good for?—excuse me, but you make me laugh," the peddler said, as he held a bottle of the dark fluid up before her; "it’s good for so many things that I could hardly get through telling you between now and sundown. It’s good for anything that harms the blood, skin, or muscles. It’s even good for the stomach, although I don’t advise it taken internally, for when it’s rubbed on the outside of folks they have perfect digestions; but what it is best for is sprains, lameness, or any skin or blood eruption. Do you know, madam, that you’d never hear of so many cancers and tumors, that are dragging weary folks to early graves hereabouts, if this medicine had been used in time?" "Cancer?" The widow’s voice had fallen, and she looked towards Ann Boyd’s house, and then more furtively over her shoulder towards her own, as if to be sure of not being observed. "That’s what I’ve always wondered at, how is anybody to know whether a—a thing is a cancer or not without going to a doctor, and, as you say, even _then_ they may not tell you the truth? Mrs. Twiggs, over the mountain, was never let know she had her cancer till a few months before it carried her off. The family and the doctor never told her the truth. The doctor said it couldn’t be cured, and to know would only make the poor thing brood over it and be miserable."