[Illustration: "And I'm his widder."] She came to my side and stood looking down at me very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman, with a wrinkled, brown face, a perpetual smile and a pipe that snuffled in a homely, comfortable way. I smiled. You couldn't help smiling when Mrs. John Shadrack looked down at you. "It's been such a treat to have you," she cried. "I've been enjoyin' every minute of your visit." This was puzzling. How long Mrs. John Shadrack had been entertaining me, or I had been entertaining her, I had not the remotest idea. A very long while ago I had seen a spire of smoke curling through the trees in Happy Valley, and I had been told that it was from her hearth. Then we had gone plunging madly down the hill to it, Tip, the gray colt and I. We had turned a sharp bend, we had heard the swish of a mountain-stream. There my memory failed me. I had awakened to find myself helpless on a bed, strangely hard, but, oh, so restful! Then she had appeared, sitting there smoking. "You are the first stranger as has been here since the tax collector last month," she said, beginning to clear away the mystery. "I love strangers." "How long have I been here?" I asked. "Since last Wednesday," she answered. "And this is what?" "The next Saturday. I've had you three days. You was a bit wrong here sometimes." She tapped her head solemnly. "But I powwowed." "You powwowed me," I cried with all the spirit I could muster, for such treatment was not to my liking. I never had any faith in charms. "Of course," she replied. "Does you think I'd let you die? Why, when me and Tip pulled you out of the creek you was a sight, you was, and you was wrong here." Again she tapped her head. "You needn't complain. Ain't you gittin' well agin? Didn't the powwow do it?" Hardly, I thought. I must have recovered in spite of it. But the old woman spoke with pride of her skill, and if she had not saved me by her occult powers, she had at least helped to drag me from the creek. For that I was grateful, so I smiled to show my thanks. "What did you powwow for?" I asked, after a long while. She had seated herself on the edge of the bed and was contemplating me gravely. "Everything," she answered. "I never had a case like yours. I never had a patient who was run away with, and kicked on the head, and drownded. So I says to Tip, I says, 'I'll do everything. I'll treat for asthmy, erysipelas and pneumony, rheumatism and snake-bite, for the yallers and----'"