akling that left my office five years
ago--and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see
if you were really convalescent!"

"I hope the trip will do you good!" said Jack, sweetly.

"But it is great news that I take back, great news!" said the doctor, as
he put the stethoscope in his pocket.

"Yes?" returned Jack, slipping his head through his shirt. "You don't
find even a speck?"

"Not a speck! No sign of the lesion! There is no reason why you should
not have gone home long ago."

"No?" Jack was fastening his string tie and doing this with something of
the urban nicety with which the doctor had folded his gloves. That tie
was one of the few inheritances from complex civilization which still had
Jack's favor.

"What have you found to do all these years?"

Jack was surprised at the question.

"I have just wandered about and read and thought," he explained.

"Without developing any sense of responsibility?" demanded the doctor in
exasperation.

"I have tried to be good to my horses, and of late I have taken to
ranching. There is a lot of responsibility in that and care, too. Take
the scale, for instance!"

"A confounded little ranch out in this God-forsaken place, that a Swede
immigrant might run!"

"No, the Swedes aren't particularly good at irrigation, though better
than the Dutch. You see, the Hollanders are used to having so much
water that--"

Jack was leaning idly against the table again. The fashionable
practitioner, accustomed to having his words accepted at their cost price
in gold, broke in hotly:

"It is past all understanding! You, the heir to twenty millions!"

"Is it twenty now?" Jack asked softly and sadly.

"Nearer thirty, probably! And shirking your duty! Shirking and for
what--for what?"

Jack faced around. The doctor, meeting a calm eye that was quizzically
challenging, paused abruptly, feeling that in some way he had been caught
at a professional disadvantage in his outburst of emotion.

"Don't you like Little Rivers?" asked Jack.

"I should be bored to death!" the doctor admitted, honestly.

"Well, you see this air never healed a lesion for you! You never
uttered a prayer to it for strength with every breath! And, doctor,"
Jack hesitated, while his lips were half open, showing his even teeth
slightly apart in the manner of a break in a story to the children
where he expected them to be very attentive to what was coming, "you
can take a piece of tissue an