A physician told Tom Blake that he not only needed a change of scene, but that to regain his health he required absolute freedom from business cares. "I would advise you," said the doctor, "to get on a horse and ride away, no matter whither. Go to the mountains--shun the merest suggestions of civilization; in short, sleep out like a bear." Blake attempted to act upon this advice. He stuffed a few shirts into a pair of saddlebags, mounted a jolting horse, and rode up into the grandeur of rugged mountain gorges. But to him the scenery imparted no thrill of admiration. His heart beat low, and his pulse quivered with a weakening flutter. The fox that in sudden alarm sprang across the pathway, the raccoon that, with awkward scramble, climbed a leaning tree, called not for a momentary quickening of his blood. He was passing through one of the most distressing of human trials. He had no disease; every muscle was sound. What, then, was the trouble? You shall know. He lay at night in a bank of leaves. Now everything startled him. He trembled violently when the sun went down. Once he sprang, with a cry of alarm, from his bed of leaves. Then he lay down again, ashamed. The horse had snorted. Farther and farther he went into the wildness of the mountains. One evening he came upon a narrow road, and, following it for some distance, saw a house. It was an old inn, with a suggestion of the brigand about it. He tied his horse to a fence made of poles and went into the house. There he found a man with a parchment face and small, evil eyes, and a woman who, on the stage, could have appropriately taken the _rôle_ of hag. "Why, come in, sir, come in," said the man, getting up and placing a chair for Blake. "Wife and I have been so lonesome for the last day or so that we have been wishing somebody would come. Haven't we, Moll?" The woman removed a cob pipe from her mouth, drew the back of a skinny hand across her blue-looking lips, made a noise like the guttural croak of an old hen with the roup, and said, "Yes." "You'll of course stay all night with us," the man remarked. "We can't possibly allow you to go on, especially as we are going to have falling weather. Oh, when it comes to hospitality, why, you'll find it right here. I'll go out and put up your horse." Blake entered no objections. His deplorable condition would have forced him into a compliance with almost any sort of proposition. The man went out, put up the horse, and soon returned with a log of wood. "The more fire we have the more cheerful it will be," he explained. "Out prospecting?" he asked. "No," Blake answered. "Don't live nowhere near here, I reckon?" "No." "How long do you expect to remain in this part of the country?" "I don't know." The old woman mumbled and then, with a grating croak, said: "He don't 'pear willin' ter tell much about hisse'f. Some folks is mighty curi's thater way."