lad's knowledge of simples proved more efficient than any of
them had dreamed. In the course of half an hour Rob's face brightened.
"Why," said he, "I don't believe it hurts so badly now. Skookie, you are
a great little doctor." And, indeed, that night he slept as soundly as
any, although they all spent less time than usual that evening in talk
about the doings of the day.

XXV

CRIPPLES' CASTLE

"Well," said Jesse, just before noon of the following day, as he stooped
to enter the door of the barabbara, "accidents never come singly." His
face was drawn with pain, as Rob, to whom he spoke, noticed.

"What's up, Jess?" asked Rob. "Has anything happened?"

"I struck my foot against an old nail or something of the sort,"
answered Jesse. "A piece of an old _klipsie_ was lying out in the grass,
and it has cut through my shoe and gone into my foot."

Rob sat up on the blanket where he had been nursing his own crippled
hand. "An old nail!" he said. "Lucky if it wasn't worse! No telling what
the point of it might do toward poisoning the wound. I'll tell you right
now that I don't want even any rusty nails around my feet, let alone the
irons of an old fox trap."

"I've heard of such things as lockjaw," said Jesse. "There was a boy in
our town had it, and he was just walking along and struck his foot
against an old nail in a shingle." His face seemed grave.

"Now, don't go to talking about that," said Rob. "When a fellow gets
scared of anything is when he catches it. They say that if a man goes to
Africa and expects to come down with a fever he always does, and if he
doesn't think anything about it he probably gets along all right. Now,
let's have a look at your foot. Take off your shoe; and put the kettle
on the fire, so that we can get some warm water. The first thing always
is to keep a cut clean; and I have read, too, that where there is any
rusty nail or toy pistol around the best thing is to keep a wound open."

"That doesn't seem to be the way you are treating your fingers," said
Jesse, looking at the cloth in which Rob still kept a big poultice of
black mud.

"Well, a poultice draws poison out of a wound, you see," said Rob, "and
mud is good for that. We had a pointer dog once, and he came home with
his face all swelled up, and my father said he had been bitten by a
snake. We didn't know what to do, but the dog did; he wouldn't let any
one touch him, but went off to a slough back of the house and lay dow