"You must be somewhat of a doctor, my dear, seeing how you've touched up the old hoss, and I propose for you to try your hand on another subject. There's poor Zach Jones, who's had the chills for six or eight years as constant as sunrise and sunset, and no medicine can't do him any good. Now I'll be bound if you'll try you can cure him sound and well. All you need to do in the world is to pet him up some'at as you have the ole hoss. Jist take a little interest in the feller an' he'll come out all right. All he wants is to forget he ever had the ager and take some light exercise and have some fun. Fun is the only medicine to cure the chills with. Quinine is no 'count but to make a racket in a feller's head, and calomel'll kill 'im, sure. Now I propose to let Zach have a hoss and saddle and you must go out a riding with 'im and try to divert his mind from his sorrows and aches and pains--now that's a good girl, Rosie." Rose, whose healthful, impulsive, generous nature would not allow her to refuse so well intended and withal so small a request, readily agreed to do all she could in the matter, and very soon thereafter she and Zach were the very best of friends, taking long rides together through woodlands and up and down the pleasant lanes of 'Squire Martin's broad estates. The young girl soon found the companionship of Zach, novel and most awkward as it was at first, agreeable and almost charming in its freshness and sincerity. As for Zach himself, he was the girl's slave from the start. He could not do too much for her in his earnest, respectful way. Women are always tyrants, and their tyranny seems to be inversely as their size and directly as the size of the man upon whom it is exerted. Rose was a very little chit of a maiden, and Zach was a great big bony frame of a fellow. The result, of course, was despotism. But, although Zach was a democrat, he seemed to like the oppression, and ran after big-winged butterflies, opened gates, pulled down and put up innumerable fences, climbed trees after empty bird nests, gathered flowers and ferns--did everything, in fact, required of him by his little queen. He became a daily visitor at the 'Squire's, and seemed to have entirely forgotten everything else or utterly submerged it in his unselfish devotion to the girl. The good 'Squire saw this with unbounded delight. So August quietly drifted by, and September hung its yellow banner on the corn and said farewell with a sigh that had in it a smack of winter.