I asked after his son and rose to go, after turning the half of my tobacco pouch into Paddy's old tin box. It was getting on toward five o'clock, and I would have just time to clean up, get the mare put in, and drive to the depot for the afternoon train. XI JAKEY WALKS It did me good to see Herrick's cheery face on the platform, and to feel the hand-grip he gave me. Our friendship dated back to college days, and unlike so many of those early intimacies, it had strengthened instead of decreased with the passage of time. Then, as now, Herrick had been the same curious mixture of enthusiast and practical hard-headed worker, and in spite of the inevitable schooling of experience and years of exacting and often discouraging labour, he had carried into the early forties a certain boyish confidence, a freshness of outlook, which gave to one instinctively, on meeting him, the impression of indomitable health and vitality. When we had tucked his valise into the back of the buggy and turned the mare about, he looked at me with a laugh. "Well, Haverill, you look quite the country practitioner already! Seven weeks' change--ye gods! But you haven't grown a beard yet!" "I'm keeping the beard for my leisure moments," I told him. "So far they haven't been many." "Don't tell me this place is in the throes of an epidemic! It looks like one of those ideal Sleepy Hollows where you get about one call for whooping-cough every six months. I came here for repose, you know." "Oh, you'll get it," I assured him. "You'll get the kind of repose that keeps you awake nights wondering where it's going to hit you next. They don't want a doctor down here; they want a new lunacy commission officer, and the first suspect will be me. Oh, I'm going to make you work, Jack! Have no idle dreams on the subject." "Work! You look as if you'd forgotten the meaning of the word! If ever a man had the luck to stumble on a good excuse for a holiday it's you. This air, this sky, these woods to fish and loaf in---- Hello, what's up? The whooping-cough I spoke of, or have you arranged a little semblance of business for my benefit! That good lady seems about to welcome us with open arms." A woman was hurrying down the road toward us, from the direction of my house. She had a gingham sunbonnet on which flapped at each step as she walked, and on catching sight of the buggy with the familiar roan mare in the shafts she waved her hand in unmistakable signal. I pulled Bess up, and by the time the woman came pantingly abreast of us I recognized her for Mrs. Sliefer, who lived in the first farm-house beyond the Bend, past the cross roads. "I been to your house, doctor," she began, "an' Mis' Searle told me you weren't to hum, so I come right on. My niece is took bad an' she's been queer sence the mornin', and I'd like you to come straight back with me an' see her."