system. You
mightn't guess it, but I pulled through the toughest case of
woman-stroke that ever a young feller was took with.

'Cheeks of my youth,
Bathed in tears have you been.'

It's facts I'm stating. Still, a good constitution does mend fast when
the flightiness and distress in the imagination leaves him and he
cools down to his right mind. And there's medicine for every ailment,
balm in Gilead, by gum, even for love sickness. The seed-pods of the
cucumber tree soaked in raw whiskey makes a first-rate bitters for all
such like fevers. I'm sorry for you, but--hold up, what did I tell
you? Look yonder! Do you see that couple walking this way from Campus
Martius? That's them!"

Looking in the direction indicated by Plutarch's long forefinger,
Arlington saw a man and a woman, side by side, slowly approaching the
mound, so absorbed in each other's companionship that they seemed
oblivious to the landscape and the sky. Neither glanced upward, though
they came so near the base of the hill that the envious spy on the
summit, peering down, identified the person and the voice of the lady
as belonging unmistakably to Miss Hale. The pair paused under a
dog-wood from which Captain Danvers plucked a flowery bough; then they
resumed their stroll, walking toward the village, arm in arm.

"Shall I holler to them?" asked Byle with the friendliest intentions.

"By no means!" said Arlington hastily. "I have not the slightest
interest in either of them. What have you here in your basket--botanical
specimens?"

The inquiry set Plutarch's tongue running on his favorite theme. "I'm
a sort of self-made doctor, Mr. ---- won't you please write your name
out just as you spell it yourself, and let me have it? I ain't sure of
the accent. I've been digging roots and so on, for brother
Blennerhassett. He's an odd fish--he fancies he knows yarbs. Well,
now, he _does_; that is, he can learn and is learning faster than you
would believe a near-sighted United Irishman could learn anything
outside of books. He knows ginseng from pleuresy-root, anyhow. This
plant--I'm taking the whole thing, root and stem, to show him how it
grows--is the genuine Indian physic; I got it right by a big rotten
log in Putnam's woods. What do you say to taking a tour to
Blennerhassett's with me in my piroque? I've got as snug a piroque as
ever oversot."

There was no reason why Arlington should not seize this offered
opportunity of once more visiting the i