friends."

The rejoinder seemed not to affect Uncle Israel, but it sent Dick into a
spasm of merriment from which he recovered only when Harlan pounded him on
the back.

"Come on," said Harlan, "it's not time to laugh yet. We've got to pack
Uncle Israel's bed."

Uncle Israel was going on the afternoon train, and in another direction.
He sat on his trunk and issued minute instructions, occasionally having
the whole thing taken apart to be put together in a different kind of a
parcel. As an especial favour, Dick was allowed to crate the bath cabinet,
though as a rule, no profane hands were permitted to touch this instrument
of health. Uncle Israel himself arranged his bottles, and boxes, and
powders; a hand-satchel containing his medicines for the journey and the
night.

"I reckon," he said, "if I take a double dose of my pain-killer, this
noon, an' a double dose of my nerve tonic just before I get on the cars, I
c'n get along with these few remedies till I get to Betsey's, where I'll
have to take a full course of treatment to pay for all this travellin'.
The pain-killer bottle an' the nerve tonic bottle is both dretful heavy,
in spite of bein' only half full."

"How would it do," suggested Harlan, kindly, "to pour the nerve tonic into
the pain-killer, and then you'd have only one bottle to carry. You mix
them inside, anyway."

"You seem real intelligent, nephew," quavered Uncle Israel. "I never
knowed I had no such smart relations. As you say, I mix 'em in my system
anyway, an' it can't do no harm to do it in the bottle first."

No sooner said than done, but, strangely enough, the mixture turned a
vivid emerald green, and had such a peculiarly vile odour that even Uncle
Israel refused to have anything further to do with it.

"I shouldn't wonder but what you'd done me a real service, nephew,"
continued Uncle Israel. "Here I've been takin' this, month after month,
an' never suspectin' what it was doin' in my insides. I've suspicioned for
some time that the pain-killer wan't doin' me no good, an' I've been goin'
to try Doctor Jones's Squaw Remedy, anyhow. I shouldn't wonder if my whole
insides was green instead of red as they orter be. The next time I go to
the City, I'm goin' to take this here compound to the healin' emporium
where I bought it, an' ask 'em what there is in it that paints folk's
insides. 'Tain't nothin' more 'n green paint."

The patient was so interested in this new development that he demanded a