ttle meadow
expanded along Grass River to a small cattle range. Over the door of his
four-roomed cottage he put the name "Cloverdale," as he had put it over
his sod cabin years before. And the Cloverdale Ranch, like the Sunflower
Ranch farther up the river, became a landmark on the trail.

Pryor Gaines, still the teacher-preacher of the Grass River settlement,
had come to the Cloverdale Ranch on an errand, and he and Jim Shirley
were chatting beside the well curb when Dr. Carey drove up.

"Hello, Carey. How did you scent chicken pie so far? And a plum pudding
all brown and ready?" Shirley called hospitably.

"It's my business to find what produces sickness as well as to provide
cures," Carey responded as he stepped from his buggy to tie his horses.

"Take him in the house, Pryor, while I stable his crowbaits," Jim said,
patting one of the doctor's well groomed horses the while.

"I hope you will stay, too," Horace Carey said to Pryor Gaines. "I have
some important news for Shirley, and you and he are fast friends."

"The bachelor twins of Grass River," Pryor Gaines declared. "Jim hasn't
any lungs and I haven't any heart, so we manage to keep a half a household
apiece, and added together make one fairly reputable citizen. I'll stay if
Jim wishes me to, of course."

"The two most useful men in the community," Carey declared. "Jim has been
father and mother, big brother, and hired girl for half the settlement,
while you, you marry and train up and bury. No neighborhood is complete
without a couple of well-meaning old bachelors."

"How about a bachelor M. D.?" Pryor Gaines asked. "I've not been able to
get in my work on you yet."

"Purely a necessary evil, the M. D. business," Carey insisted. "Here's Jim
now. We wait the chicken and plum pudding, Host Shirley."

Jim's skill as a cook had not decreased since the day when he prepared
Asher Aydelot's wedding supper, and the three men who sat together at
that day's meal took large enjoyment in this quiet hour together.

"I have a letter for you, Shirley," the doctor said at last. "It was sent
to me some months ago with the request that I give it to you when I had
word to do so. I have had word. Here it is."

"I think I'll be going now." Pryor Gaines rose with the words.

"Don't go," Jim insisted. "I want you here."

So Gaines sat down. Shirley, who was quick in intuitive power, knew
instinctively what awaited him. He opened the letter and read it while the
two fr