“Say, Bob, I want you should shake hands with Mr. Severance.” Bob raised himself with apparent difficulty on one elbow, and extended his hand. “How are you, Bob?” continued Mr. Bunny with anxious solicitude. “But I can see it's painin' you something awful!” “Folks, I've spraint my leg,—mebby she's broke—” and Bob groaned. “You want a doctor—” said Johnny. Mr. Bunny and the sufferer exchanged significant glances. “Folks, it ain't my leg that's hurtin' me most,—it's here—” and Bob rested his hand on the bosom of his shirt. “Stomach?” said Johnny innocently. “Sh,—heart!” said Bunny quickly. “My feelin's are raisin' hell inside of me. This spraint leg ain't nothin'.” But Mr. Graham groaned lustily. “Mebby if you two was to help me, I could manage to hobble to my shack.... No, stranger”—to Johnny, as they set out—“I don't want no doctor. He might set my leg, but he couldn't cure me. Folks, I'm hard hit where no pills can ever get to.” They helped him back into the hills, but had Johnny been a little less disposed to confidence he might have doubted the integrity of that sprained leg, for Bob had a curious way of forgetting and then suddenly remembering it with many groans. If Johnny noticed this at all it only went to prove Mr. Bunny's statement that the mind of man was capable of furnishing a very superior article of suffering. Mr. Graham's retreat was a shack set down in a grove of young pines. As far as Johnny could see, his grub-stake seemed to be in a convenient liquid form. “Put the bottle down beside me, Bunny, where I'll have it handy,” said Bob, when they had helped him to his bed on the floor in a corner of the room. “He needs a stimulant,” explained fluent Mr. Bunny. “When you're sufferin' like Bob is, you got to take a stimulant.” “Folks, I've knocked around a heap,” said Bob. “I've drunk whatever can be got through the bung-hole of a barrel or out of the neck of a bottle; but when a man's really sufferin', whisky's got all the other souse skinned a mile!” “What did I tell you?” asked Bunny of Johnny, with a glance of commiseration. “Besides, I don't have no doctor from Alvarado,—my enemy's got the everlasting drop on me, that's why! If my leg's spraint she can stay spraint—if she's broke she can stay broke!” added Bob with resolute stoicism. “You certainly talk like a man, Bob!” said Bunny admiringly. “If I could only jest see my child—” said Bob, and passed the back of his hand before his eyes. “It's them domestic feelin's that's hurtin' him so,” whispered Bunny to Johnny. Aloud he said: “I'm in favor of tellin' Mr. Severance just how you stand, Bob,—why you can't have no doctor.” “Kin you vouch for Mr. Severance?” “Of course I can vouch for him. Ain't I told you he was a hundred per cent, all right?” cried Bunny warmly. He fixed Johnny with his shifty glance and went on.