“You'll say I'm a big fool,” Trawley went on, with the glow of a mild fanatic in his eyes; “but I don't give a damn. The proof of the puddin' is chawin' the rag, I've always heard. Right at my worst minute, who should walk in an' set down for a chat except Paul Rundel? I always liked that boy, an' when he come home to give 'imself up like he did I was one that believed he meant what he said. I'm convinced of it now, because he's livin' up to his doctrine. Well, one thing fetched on another as me'n him talked, till somehow I got to tellin' him how low I was an' what the doctor said. I thought he'd be sorry for me, but he shuck his head an' actually laughed. He tuck my wrist, he did, an' felt my pulse, an' then he peeled my eyes back an' looked at the balls, an' made me show him my tongue; then he slapped me on the knee--careless like--an' laughed free an' hearty. “'Thar ain't nothin' much the matter with you, Sid,' he said. I know, because I've run across lots an' lots o' cases like your'n.' Then he plunged into the sensiblest talk--well, Cap--Jim, I mean--'scuse me, I never heard anything to equal it in all my born days. It was like a rousin' sermon preached by a jolly base-ball player, or a feller that just got the meat out of religion an' throwed the gristle to the dogs. Why, he told me that what ailed me couldn't be reached by any dose o' medicine that ever slid down a throat. He said he'd bet his hat that I had some'n on my mind that ought to be unloaded. I sort o' shied off thar, but he went into all his own trouble over that shootin'-scrape in such a free an' open way that I--” “You didn't--you didn't violate your oath to--” Hoag started, and his shaggy brows met suspiciously. “No, an' I didn't have to. He said--Paul said--totin' sin that was behind you an' ought to be forgot was as rank a poison to some systems as any virus that ever crawled through the blood, an' I admitted that I was bothered by some things I'd done that I didn't want to talk about. But, oh my! how good that boy made me feel! He said if I would just quit thinkin' about my stomach an' what went into it, an' keep my mind full o' pure thoughts, determine to act right in the future, an' take exercise in the open air, that I'd git as sound as a dollar right off.” “Oh, I see.” Hoag smiled more easily. “An' you took his advice. Well, he ain't so far wrong. Believin' you are done for is powerful weakenin'. I seed a bedrid old hag once jump out o' bed when somebody yelled that a mad dog was headed toward her cabin. She broke out with nothin' on but a shift an' one stockin' an' run half a mile, waded through a creek, an' climbed a ten-rail fence to git to a neighbor's house, an' after that she was hale an' hearty.”