es, the little beggar's thirsty."

Well, they made a great fuss about the creature's being thirsty, and so
finally I got a panful of spring water and it drank until I thought it
would burst. I'm not vicious, as I say, but I wish it had.

Well, the dog finished and lay down by the fire, and everything seemed
to go on as before. Mr. Thoburn was in a good humor, and he came over to
the spring and brought a trayful of glasses.

"To save you steps, Minnie!" he explained. "You have no idea how it
pains me to see you working. Gentlemen, name your poison!"

"A frappe with blotting-paper on the side," Mr. Moody snarled from the
slot-machine. "If I drink much more, I'll have to be hooped up like a
barrel."

"Just what is the record here?" the bishop asked. "I'm ordered eight
glasses, but I find it more than a sufficiency."

"We had one man here once who could drink twenty-five at a time," I
said, "but he was a German."

"He was a tank," Mr. Sam corrected grumpily. He was watching something
on the floor--I couldn't see what. "All I need is to swallow a few
goldfish and I'd be a first-class aquarium."

"What I think we should do," Miss Cobb said, "is to try to find out just
what suits us, and stick to that. I'm always trying."

"Damned trying!" Mr. Jennings snarled, and limped over for more water.
"I'd like to know where to go for rheumatism."

"I got mine here," said Mr. Thoburn cheerfully. "It's my opinion this
place is rheumatic as well as malarious. And as for this water, with all
due respect to the spirit in the spring"--he bowed to me--"I think it's
an insult to ask people to drink it. It isn't half so strong as it
was two years ago. Taste it; smell it! I ask the old friends of the
sanatorium, is that water what it used to be?"

"Don't tell me it was ever any worse than this!" Miss Summers exclaimed.
But Thoburn went on. The card-players stopped to listen, but Mr. Sam was
still staring at something on the floor.

"I tell you, the spring is losing its virtue, and, like a woman, without
virtue, it is worthless."

"But interesting!" Mr. Sam said, and stooped down.

"Consider," went on Mr. Thoburn, standing and holding his glass to the
light, "how we are at the mercy of this little spring! A convulsion in
the bowels of the earth, and its health-giving properties may be changed
to the direst poison. How do we know, you and I, some such change has
not occurred overnight? Unlikely as it is, it's a possibility that,