After awhile the colt stopped suddenly. He urged it on. Snap! A big something was hurled through the bushes and landed at the doctor's feet with a heavy thud. The pommel of the saddle had caught on a grape vine and the girths had snapped with the strain. John made a few remarks while he was picking it up and a few more while he was getting it on the back of the shying colt. But he finally landed it and managed to get it half-fastened. He stood still, not knowing which way to turn. A dog was barking somewhere--he would go in that direction. Still keeping the bridle over his arm he spread his hands before him and slowly moved on. At last he stopped. He seemed to be getting no nearer to the dog. All at once, and not a great way off, he saw a fine sight. It was a lighted doorway with the figure of a man in it. He shouted lustily, "Bring a lantern out here, my friend, if you please. I guess I'm lost." "All right," the man shouted back and in a few minutes the lantern was bobbing along among the trees. "Why, Doctor!" exclaimed James Curtis, "have you been floundering around all this time in these woods so close to the house? Why didn't you holler before?" "There didn't seem to be anything to 'holler' at. Until that door opened I thought I was in the middle of these woods." "Your wife just telephoned to know if you were at our house and I told her you started home an hour ago." "She'll be uneasy. Put me into the main road, will you, and we'll make tracks for home." When he got there and had told Mary about it, she vowed she would not let him go to the country again when the night was so pitch dark, realizing as she made it, the futility of her vow. Then she told him of the message that had come in his absence and straightway sent him out again into the darkness. * * * * * It was midnight. The doctor was snoring so loudly that he had awakened Mary. Just in time. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling-ling. By hard work she got him awake. He floundered out and along toward the little tyrant. He reached it. "Hello. What is it?" "O! I got the wrong number." "Damnation!" Slumber again. After some time Mary was awakened by her husband's voice asking, "What is it?" "It's time for George to take his medicine. We've been having a dispute about it. I said it was the powder he was to take at two o'clock and he said it was the medicine in the bottle. Now he's mad and won't take either." "It was the powder. Tell him I say for him to take it now." The answering voice sank to a whisper, but the words came very distinctly, "I'm afraid he won't do it--he's so stubborn. I wish it was the bottle medicine because I believe he would take that." The doctor chuckled. "Give him that," he said. "It won't make a great deal of difference in this case, and thinking he was in the right will do him more good than the powder. Good night and report in the morning." The report in the morning was that George was better!