“Mum’s the word, I promise you, for I ain’t going to put my own neck in the halter! But ’twan’t my fault that things went wrong. I done jest what you paid me for--went to old Doctor Binks’ office, near midnight, and tole him to go to little Eva at once, ’cause she was ’most strangling with a croupy cold, and might choke to death if he didn’t go to her right away. But the ole fool was drunk as a biled owl, on one of them dretful sprees he takes now and then, and says he to me, says he, ‘Dan, I’m sick as the devil! I’m too sick to git into my buggy, but I’ll send my assistant right off to see the poor little thing.’ So I come away in a hurry, for I promised to go with the boys to take ole Jimison’s gate offen the hinges, and turn his cows into Ludington’s pasture, and a few other things! But, darn it all, I never thunk about young Doctor Ludington assisting of ole Binks, or I’d knowed that he could not come to Stony Ledge without an all-fired racket!” “Well, it has happened, and all three of us will get into an awful mess if our part in it ever comes to light. Indeed, we daren’t tell the truth about it, although a hundred questions may be asked us at the inquest to-morrow. The secret is between us three, for Doctor Binks, being drunk, may not remember anything, and, if he does, we can deny it. So remember that you know nothing at all, and be as dumb as an oyster,” said Patty. The frightened Dan had just assured them that he would carry the secret to the grave, when Miss Tabby sharply called to him that he must go and fetch Doctor Binks in a hurry to his suffering master. Patty quickly arose to the occasion. “Oh, Cousin Tab, we were just asking him to go, and he says he saw Doctor Binks lying in the fence corner three miles away, so drunk that no one could induce him to stand on his feet a minute, and they had to leave him there till morning. So what shall we do, with the nearest doctor fifteen miles away, only for old Doctor Ludington?” She said this in a tone of despair, for all knew that even if the hot-headed old ex-Confederate could be coaxed to the bedside of the Union soldier, Gran’ther Groves himself would have preferred death rather than a life saved by his enemy. So it was settled that no physician could be gotten for the old man, and they must do their best for him, an undertaking that gave very poor results, so that Miss Tabitha was presently wringing her hands and lamenting: “Nothing we do don’t help him at all! See how purple his face is getting, how his limbs twitch an’ draw up, poor soul, an’ how awful hard he breathes, like as if he was dying! ’Clar’ to goodness if I’d ’spected this was going to happen, I’d never a druv little Eva off so soon! She allays could doctor him better nor any of us!”