llo, Jack!" said the doctor.

Jack went just half-way across the room to shake hands. Then he dropped
back to his easy position, with the table as a rest, after he had set a
chair for the visitor.

"How do you like Little Rivers?" Jack asked.

"I have been here only thirty-six hours," answered the doctor, avoiding a
direct answer. He was pulling off his silk summer gloves, making the
operation a trifle elaborate, one which seemed to require much
attention. "I came pretty near mistaking another man for you, but his
mole patch saved me. I didn't think you could have grown one out here.
Wonderfully like you! Have you met him?"

He glanced up as he asked this question, which seemed the first to occur
to him as a warming-up topic of conversation before he came to the
business in hand.

"No. I have just heard of him," Jack answered.

The doctor smiled at his gloves, which he now folded and put in his
pocket. Don't the lecturers to young medical students say, "Divert your
patient's mind to some topic other than himself as you get your first
impression"? Now Dr. Bennington drew forward in his chair, rested the
tips of the long fingers of a soft, capable hand on the edge of the
table, and looked up to Jack in professional candor, sweeping him with
the knowing eye of the modern confessor of the secrets of all manner of
mankind. With the other hand he drew a stethoscope from his side
coat-pocket.

"Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from New
York--just five minutes' work!" and he gave the symbol of examination a
flourish in emphasis.

"I don't think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient on
such occasions," Jack returned. "It is an easy function in this
Arizona climate."

He drew his shirt up from a compact loin and lean middle, revealing the
arch of his deep chest, the flesh of which was healthy pink under neck
and face plated with Indian tan. The doctor's eyes lighted with the bliss
of a critic used to searching for flaws at sight of a masterpiece. While
he conducted the initial plottings with the rubber cup which carried
sounds to one of the most expensive senses of hearing in America, Jack
was gazing out of the window, as if his mind were far away across the
cactus-spotted levels.

"Breathe deep!" commanded the doctor.

Jack's nostrils quivered with the indrawing of a great gust of air and
his diaphragm swelled until his ribs were like taut bowstrings.

"And you were the pasty-faced we