"Well!" said Caleb, "I reckon the malary's knocked plumb out o' me!" "I hope so; but if it isn't, it will be; for Doctor Taggess says that a month at sea is the newest treatment prescribed for malaria, and that is said to be a sure cure. The trip over won't take a month, but a week or ten days of the ocean ought to make a beginning, and show you how 'twill act, and if the enterprise makes a hit, I'll show my appreciation by standing the expense of a trip up the Mediterranean and back by direct steamer to the United States. By the way, while you're up the Mediterranean, you might join one of Cook's tourist parties, and see the Holy Land. How does the entire plan strike you?" "How--does it--strike me?" drawled Caleb. Then he pulled himself together and continued: "Why, it's struck me all of a heap. Say, Philip, you've got a mighty long head--do you know it? I ain't sayin' that I can't do the work middlin' well, though I have heard that it takes a pickaxe an' a corkscrew to get any new idee into the commoner kinds of the English skull. An' a trip through the Holy Land! But say--who'd look after my Sunday-school class while I was away?" "Oh, I will, if you can't find a better substitute. You've been doing your best to get me into church work--you know you have, you sly scamp. Now's your chance." "To break you into that sort o' work," said Caleb, slowly, "I'd be willin' to peddle ice in Greenland, an' live on the proceeds. But there's my other class--though I s'pose I could farm that out for a spell. Then there's a lot o' folks that's been lookin' to me for one thing an' another so long that--" "That perhaps 'twould do them good to be obliged to depend upon themselves for a few weeks." "Phil dear, don't be heartless! Caleb, couldn't you trust those people to a woman for a little while?" "Oh, couldn't I! An' I thank you from the bottom of my heart besides. London! Then I could see Westminster Abbey, an' the Tower o' London, an' go to John Wesley's birthplace, an'--" "Yes," said Philip, "and you could run over to Paris, too." "No, sir!" exclaimed Caleb. "When I want to see Satan an' his kingdom, I won't have to travel three thousan' mile to do it. But--" "But me no more buts, Caleb--unless you would rather not go." "Rather not, indeed! If I was dyin' as hard of malary as I'm dyin' to see some things in England, I guess I'd turn up in kingdom-come in about three days, almanac-time. What I was 'buttin'' about was only this: are you plumb sure that I'm the right man for the job?"