skill. And so many a
mile they drove together to their mutual good. For, while the doctor
prosecuted with delight and diligence his healing art, all
unconsciously he himself was regaining something of his freedom and
manhood.

"Digs 'em up, don't he?" said Ike one Sunday, when the second flat of
Jim Ross's store was filled with men and women who, though they had
lived in the country for from two to twenty years, were still for the
most part strangers to each other. "Digs 'em up like the boys dig the
badgers. Got to come out of their holes when he gits after 'em."

"Dat's so," said Perault, who had become an ardent follower of Shock's.
"Dat's so. All same lak ole boss."

"Prospector, eh?" said Ike.

"Oui. Prospector, sure enough, by gar!" replied Perault, with the
emphasis of a man who has stumbled upon a great find; and the name came
at once to be recognised as so eminently suitable that from that time
forth it stuck, and all the more that before many weeks there was none
to dispute the title with him.

All this time the Old Prospector fretted and wasted with an inward
fever that baffled the doctor's skill, and but for the visits of his
friends and their constant assurances that next week would see him fit,
the old man would have succumbed.

"It's my opinion," said Ike, who with The Kid had made a habit of
dropping in for a visit to the sick man, and then would dispose
themselves outside for a smoke, listening the while to the flow of song
and story wherewith his daughter would beguile the old man from his
weariness; "it's my opinion that it aint either that rheumatism nor
that there pewmonia,"--Ike had once glanced at the doctor's label which
distinguished the pneumonia medicine from that prescribed for
rheumatism,--"it aint either the rheumatism nor that there pewmonia,"
he repeated, "that's a-killin' him."

"What then do you think it is, Ike?" said the doctor, to whom Ike had
been confiding this opinion.

"It's frettin'; frettin' after the trail and the Lost River. For
thirteen years he's chased that river, and he'll die a-chasin' it."

"Well, he'll certainly die if he starts after it in his present
condition."

"Maybe so, doctor. I wouldn't interdict any opinion of yours. But I
reckon he'd die a mighty sight easier."

"Well, Ike, my boy," said the doctor in his gentle voice, "perhaps you
are right, perhaps you're right. The suggestion is worth considering."

And the result seemed to justify Ike's op