"What troubles you, doctor?" he inquired. In answer the man leaned across from his buggy, taking one of Ambrose's lean hands in his, and, unaccustomed to a touch with such magnetic power in it, a kind of electric thrill passed through the susceptible boy. "It's you I've been troubling about lately, my son," Doctor Webb answered, "and now it seems as if Providence had just sent you along for me to speak to this morning. I've brought you out of children's diseases, chicken pox, measles and the like, but I've been seein' symptoms in you lately that have made me powerful uneasy, 'cause in this trouble it ain't in my power to help you through." Ambrose's tongue was thickening, and his Adam's apple moving convulsively. "Is the disease so serious, then?" he whispered, feeling a hitherto unsuspected though general weakness creeping over him. The doctor bowed his great head until his double, treble chin rested upon his shirt bosom, concealing his face from view. "Sometimes it's fatal, my boy," he returned, appearing so moved that his big voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. "It's true there's some that gets over it, but nobody ain't ever _quite_ the same afterward." Ambrose was trying to keep his knees from knocking together. "How have I showed symptoms of the disease?" he asked. And Doctor Webb's whole body rocked slowly back and forth. "My son, you're showin' 'em uncommon bad this mornin'. I could notice 'em soon as I was ridin' up toward you; your colour is a-comin' an' a-goin', your eyes is shinin' unnatural bright, your heart is a-thumpin' too quick." And here he sighed, so that Ambrose braced his lean shoulders for the worst, although his lips were dry. "Tell me quick, doctor; ef I kin bear it, what is it ails me?" "Puppy love," the doctor shouted, and then giving his old horse an unexpected cut with his clean willow switch, off he drove, shaking with laughter. "Puppy love!" Twice Ambrose repeated the words in a stupid fashion, and then his laughter rang out until it sounded like an echo of the older man's heavier roar. "Durn it," he said to himself, "ef that ain't just another way of sayin' 'Peachy'!" When finally the traveller entered the shelter of a certain group of low hills near the Kentucky river, it was well past the middle of the afternoon, and there in a hollow he fed and watered his horse and then lay down behind a tree. CHAPTER II THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE IN THE mean time, however, Mrs. Barrows and her offspring had not been idle. Indeed, no sooner had they become convinced that no information could be had out of Ambrose than they both set off at once hurrying across back lots, the younger preceding her mother like an outrider, thrusting her head and her news into every open door.