ay of his own, with philosophy and books, than with woodcraft
and rifles.

He must have overheard some of the talk between the miser and the
herb-doctor; for, just after the withdrawal of the one, he made up to
the other--now at the foot of the stairs leaning against the baluster
there--with the greeting above.

"Think it will cure me?" coughed the miser in echo; "why shouldn't it?
The medicine is nat'ral yarbs, pure yarbs; yarbs must cure me."

"Because a thing is nat'ral, as you call it, you think it must be good.
But who gave you that cough? Was it, or was it not, nature?"

"Sure, you don't think that natur, Dame Natur, will hurt a body, do
you?"

"Natur is good Queen Bess; but who's responsible for the cholera?"

"But yarbs, yarbs; yarbs are good?"

"What's deadly-nightshade? Yarb, ain't it?"

"Oh, that a Christian man should speak agin natur and yarbs--ugh, ugh,
ugh!--ain't sick men sent out into the country; sent out to natur and
grass?"

"Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame
horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs. A sort of
yarb-doctors in their way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for
sore lungs, nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my teamster
on the prairie? And who made an idiot of Peter the Wild Boy?"

"Then you don't believe in these 'ere yarb-doctors?"

"Yarb-doctors? I remember the lank yarb-doctor I saw once on a
hospital-cot in Mobile. One of the faculty passing round and seeing who
lay there, said with professional triumph, 'Ah, Dr. Green, your yarbs
don't help ye now, Dr. Green. Have to come to us and the mercury now,
Dr. Green.--Natur! Y-a-r-b-s!'"

"Did I hear something about herbs and herb-doctors?" here said a
flute-like voice, advancing.

It was the herb-doctor in person. Carpet-bag in hand, he happened to be
strolling back that way.

"Pardon me," addressing the Missourian, "but if I caught your words
aright, you would seem to have little confidence in nature; which,
really, in my way of thinking, looks like carrying the spirit of
distrust pretty far."

"And who of my sublime species may you be?" turning short round upon
him, clicking his rifle-lock, with an air which would have seemed half
cynic, half wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the
expression, which made its sincerity appear more or less dubious.

"One who has confidence in nature, and confidence in man, with some
little modest confi