Since the whooping-cough and measles of childhood the junior partner of Harum & Company had never to his recollection had a day's illness in his life, and he fought the attack which came upon him about the first week in December with a sort of incredulous disgust, until one morning when he did not appear at breakfast. He spent the next week in bed, and at the end of that time, while he was able to be about, it was in a languid and spiritless fashion, and he was shaken and exasperated by a persistent cough. The season was and had been unusually inclement even for that region, where the thermometer sometimes changes fifty degrees in thirty-six hours; and at the time of his release from his room there was a period of successive changes of temperature from thawing to zero and below, a characteristic of the winter climate of Homeville and its vicinity. Dr. Hayes exhibited the inevitable quinine, iron, and all the tonics in his pharmacopoeia, with cough mixtures and sundry, but in vain. Aunt Polly pressed bottles of sovereign decoctions and infusions upon him--which were received with thanks and neglected with the blackest ingratitude--and exhausted not only the markets of Homeville, but her own and Sairy's culinary resources (no mean ones, by the way) to tempt the appetite which would not respond. One week followed another without any improvement in his condition; and indeed as time went on he fell into a condition of irritable listlessness which filled his partner with concern. "What's the matter with him, Doc?" said David to the physician. "He don't seem to take no more int'rist than a foundered hoss. Can't ye do nothin' for him?" "Not much use dosin' him," replied the doctor. "Pull out all right, may be, come warm weather. Big strong fellow, but this cussed influenzy, or grip, as they call it, sometimes hits them hardest." "Wa'al, warm weather 's some way off," remarked Mr. Harum, "an' he coughs enough to tear his head off sometimes." The doctor nodded. "Ought to clear out somewhere," he said. "Don't like that cough myself." "What do you mean?" asked David. "Ought to go 'way for a spell," said the doctor; "quit working, and get a change of climate." "Have you told him so?" asked Mr. Harum. "Yes," replied the doctor; "said he couldn't get away." "H'm'm!" said David thoughtfully, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and finger. A day or two after the foregoing interview, John came in and laid an open letter in front of David, who was at his desk, and dropped languidly into a chair without speaking. Mr. Harum read the letter, smiled a little, and turning in his chair, took off his glasses and looked at the young man, who was staring abstractedly at the floor. "I ben rather expectin' you'd git somethin' like this. What be you goin' to do about it?" "I don't know," replied John. "I don't like the idea of leasing the property in any case, and certainly not on the terms they offer; but it is lying idle, and I'm paying taxes on it----"