at could swim, I shouldn't be
here to-night fanning the mosquitoes away from you," he retorted, with a
laugh that was meant to be cheering. And then he reverted to his one
overwhelming and blankly insoluble problem: "If I only knew what to do
for you!"

"When I was a little girl we lived in the country, and my mother
doctored the entire neighborhood with roots and herbs. It is a pity I
haven't inherited a little of her skill, isn't it?"

"There are lashings of pitiful things in this world, Lucetta, and we are
getting acquainted with a few of them right now. But I mustn't let you
talk too much. Try to go to sleep, if you can, and get a little rest
before the fever comes on again."

She closed her eyes obediently, and after a time he knew by her regular
breathing that she was asleep. For a patient hour he kept the birch-bark
fan in motion and with the first streakings of dawn got up stiffly to
make his way to the river-bank, dragging with him a half-rotted log to
turn the pillar-of-fire signal into a pillar of smoke.

XVII

ROOTS AND HERBS

THE dawning of the second day in the camp under the great spruces found
Prime still struggling desperately with the problem of what to do.
Lucetta's condition seemed to be rather worse than better. There was the
usual morning abatement of the fever, but she was evidently growing
weaker. Prime's too vivid imagination pictured an impending catastrophe,
and the canoe thief, no less than Watson Grider, came in for wordless
and despairing maledictions. If the canoe had not been stolen they might
by now be within reach of help.

It was when matters were at this most distressing pass that the
writing-man's invention, pricked alive by what Lucetta had said
concerning her mother's skill with simples, opened a temerarious door of
hope. Making his charge as comfortable as he could, and leaving a cup of
water where she could reach it, he told her he was going for a walk.

Taking the brook for a pathfinder, he traced its course until it led him
into a region of opener spaces where there was a better chance for
ground growth. In the first weed patch he came to he began to pluck and
taste. Unhappily, his knowledge of botany was perilously near a minus
quantity; there were few of the weeds that he knew even by name. At the
imminent risk of poisoning himself, he went on, chewing a leaf here and
there, not knowing in the leas