"Benjamin" went and did as he was bidden, bringing down a squirrel within gunshot of the fort and sending it in forthwith to his mother. But this was far from satisfying "Benjamin," and he believed it would be far from satisfying Sprigg. As the station here had resulted in a settlement of considerable extent, game of the larger sort had grown very scarce in the immediate vicinity, thus obliging the hunter, who would pursue the chase on a scale beseeming the hunter's paradise, to betake him to the more unfrequented parts of the forest. So, to the distant lick went young Ben Logan, leading, Daniel Boone-like, a horse by the bridle to help him home with the spoils of the chase. He had taken counsel with himself and was resolved that Sprigg should have a fair start in the direction of recovery to health, and to this benevolent end a fat, young buck or buffalo must that day bite the dust; or, better still, as the woods were full of wild-honey, a fat, young bear. Squirrels and birds might do well enough for people in full health, where nature had only to hold her own; but in a case like Sprigg's where nature was exhausted, it was only the larger quadrupeds which could yield the nourishment sufficiently strengthening for certain and speedy recuperation. According to Ben's theory, a given quantity of bear's meat, for example, afforded some ten or twelve times as much nourishment as an equal quantity of squirrel's meat. That day a fat, young bear fell a sacrifice to Ben's physiological heresy; the next day a fat, young buck; a lordly buffalo on the third, and so on, and so on, for more than a week, with a smart sprinkling of squirrels and birds looking to the special wants of the doctors and nurses. Every morning he would furnish the squirrel or bird required of him; which, having done by way of compromise between his better judgment and his duty as a son, then away to the lick would he hie himself on his own responsibility for something better worth a hunter's notice. The good fellow had evidently taken Sprigg's case into his own hands, under an abiding conviction that nothing less than an heroic course of wild meat could bring it to a happy issue. Thus, while he was devoting all his powers of body and mind, and the shiny parts of a fortnight to the sustenance of one little sick boy, young Ben Logan had well nigh foundered the whole settlement on wild meat--the backbones, tongues and spareribs themselves being enough to surfeit the fort, consisting, though it did, of some ten or twelve families, all well stocked with children and dogs.