o deserve your trustin' us--poor little wreck."

In a roomy stall they put Betty. It was an afternoon's work to arrange
it for the scientific treatment of the broken leg. Joe, with the
readiness of a surgeon--he was, indeed, an amateur veterinary, and was
consulted as such by the whole countryside--set the leg and put it in
plaster of Paris. The two men rigged a sling which should keep the
weight of the mare off the injured legs and support her body. With the
help of two farm hands, Betty was put into this gear in a way which
made it impossible for her to move enough to hurt the broken leg. A
rest was provided for her head, and her equine comfort was in every
way considered. When all was done, the farmer and the electrical
engineer looked at each other with exceeding satisfaction.

"She'll get well," said Jarvis, with conviction. "I never saw it
better done than you have managed it."

"Me?" returned Joe, with a laugh. "Well, say--I wouldn't mind havin'
you for chief assistant when I go into the business perfessionally."

Jarvis spent the rest of the day, more or less, in the box stall. The
evening was occupied in assisting Betty to receive the entire houseful
of boarders, whom the news of the accident had reached at about supper
time.

At midnight, having tried without success for an hour to sleep, he got
up, dressed and went out through the warm July starlight to tell the
brown mare he was sorry for her. He found a man's figure standing
beside that of the animal.

"Well!" Joe greeted him. "You're another. I can't seem to sleep,
thinkin' about this poor critter, slung up here--sufferin'--and not
understandin'. They like company--now I'm sure of it. It's a good
thing she can't know how many days and nights she's got to be strung
here, ain't it?"

His hand was gently stroking the mare's shoulder, as if he thought it
must ache. He looked around at Jarvis, standing in the rays of light
from a lantern hanging on a peg near by.

"Go back to bed, Joe," advised Jarvis. "You've plenty to do to-morrow.
I'll stay with the patient a while. I shall like to do it--I'm as bad
as you, I can't sleep for thinking of her."

"Course you can't," thought Joe, going back to the house. "But you
didn't say which 'her' 'twas that keeps you awake. I guess it's one's
much as 'tis t'other."

It was about two o'clock in the morning that Jarvis, in a corner of
the box stall, where the mare could see him, lying at full length upon
a pile