The poor fellow left us next day, and we never saw him again. It is to be remembered that he never encouraged Hetty Upham, whose infatuation was doubtless fanned by his indifference. She offered him bread, nay, cakes and ale, but he took instead a stone, because cakes and ale had lost their savour. We heard, afterwards, that he died on the Skagway Pass in an attempt to reach the Klondyke too early in the spring. He was seeking the gold of the Yukon placers; perhaps he found, beyond the Great White Silence, his Dinah. XI A POISONED SPRING In our bunk-house three of the boys were about to turn into bed. They had worked hard all day, driving cattle into the home-pasture for the spring _rodeo_, and on the morrow they would have to work harder still, cutting out the steers and branding the calves. "Who is this Perfessor?" asked Dan. Jimmie, who was rubbing tallow on to his lariat, answered-- "There's a piece about him in the _Tribune_." Pete picked up the county paper, which happened to be lying on the floor. He read aloud, in a sing-song drawl-- "'We are greatly honoured by the presence amongst us of Professor Adam Chawner, the eminent surgeon and pathologist----'" "How's that?" demanded Dan. "Surgeon an' path--ologist." "What's path--ologist?" Pete expectorated a contempt for ignorance which he was too polite to put into words. Then he said suavely-- "A pathologist is a kind o' pathfinder. Comes from the Greek, I reckon: _path--logus_--skilled in finding noo paths to knowledge. See!" "If you ain't a walkin' dictionary!" "It comes nateral to me," Pete admitted modestly. He continued-- "'The Professor, instead of taking a well-earned holiday in our land of roses and sunshine, proposes to study at first hand the micrococci of a deadly disease which, we are given to understand, is peculiar to this part of California....'" "Never heard of a deadly disease peculiar to these parts," said Jimmie thoughtfully,--"always exceptin' Annie-dominie." "'Peculiar to this part of California,'" continued Pete, "'and likely, given certain conditions, to develop into an epidemic as terrible and mysterious as the sleeping sickness.'" "Sleepin' sickness? What's that?" "Dan, yer ignorance is disgraceful. Sleepin' sickness is common as hives amongst the cannibals. After a square meal o' missionary, the critters fall asleep, and they don't never wake up neither. Serve 'em right, too." "Go on, Pete." Pete, with a thick thumb upon the right line, went on-- "'The Professor's researches here may prove of vital importance. And, speaking for our fellow-citizens, we venture to assure this distinguished pathologist of our cordial desire to co-operate, so far as it may be possible, in the important work which he has undertaken.'" "Slings words, that feller," remarked Jimmie. "But what in thunder is Perfessor Adam Chawner a-doin' in Paradise?" "Come, mebbee, to see you rope steers," suggested Dan.