t _exactly like that of my own little patient_, and urging
the poor half-distracted parents to try something new--either medicine
or physician. They would appeal to their feelings by asking them how
they could be willing, as parents,--however great might be their
confidence in me as a physician,--to let a darling child lie, day after
day, and yet make no extra effort to save it.

Their appeals were not wholly ineffective; indeed, what else could have
been expected? My first suspicion of any thing radically wrong, arose
from a decidedly unexpected effect from a little medicine I had
previously ordered. It seemed quite clear to my mind that a neutralizing
agent had been at work somehow, by design or otherwise. And yet I shrunk
from making an inquiry. In the end, however, I found myself morally
compelled to do so. The results were very nearly what I had feared, and
what might have been expected.

One of the _reliabilities_ of the wise ones of the neighborhood went by
the name of the "Indian" doctor. Whether in addition to a very little
Indian blood he was half or three-fourths Spanish, Portuguese, or
Canadian, I never knew, for I never took pains to inquire. But he had
Indian habits. He was at times intemperate and vicious. No one who knew
him would have trusted him with a sixpence of his own honest earnings,
at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many
people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of
their children.

There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of
this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a
state of intoxication. He knew, in this respect, his own weakness. But
then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He
was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever,
properly a sane or even a steady man.

On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they
frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the
Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had
permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.

The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of
wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder
was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by
no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save
the few drops of alcohol which it cont