s to keep the doctors supplied with salicin and tannin, so, if I do,
other folks needn't bother."

He arose and poured more sap into the kettles as it boiled away and
replenished the fire. He nibbled a twig when he began on the spice
brush. As he sat on the piled wood, and bent over his work he was
an attractive figure. His face shone with health and was bright with
anticipation. While he split the tender bark and slipped out the wood he
spoke his thoughts slowly:

"The five cents a pound I'll get for you is even less, but I love the
fragrance and taste. You don't peel so easy as the willow, but I like
to prepare you better, because you will make some miserable little sick
child well or you may cool some one's fevered blood. If ever she has a
fever, I hope she will take medicine made from my bark, because it will
be strong and pure. I've half a notion to set some one else gathering
the stuff and tending the plants and spend my time in the little
laboratory compounding different combinations. I don't see what bigger
thing a man can do than to combine pure, clean, unadulterated roots and
barks into medicines that will cool fevers, stop chills, and purify bad
blood. The doctors may be all right, but what are they going to do if we
men behind the prescription cases don't supply them with unadulterated
drugs. Answer me that, Mr. Sapsucker. Doc says I've done mighty well so
far as I have gone. I can't think of a thing on earth I'd rather do, and
there's money no end in it. I could get too rich for comfort in short
order. I wouldn't be too wealthy to live just the way I do for any
consideration. I don't know about her, though. She is lovely, and
handsome women usually want beautiful clothing, and a quantity of things
that cost no end of money. I may need all I can get, for her. One never
can tell."

He arose to stir the sap and pour more from the barrels to the kettles
before he began on the tag alder he had gathered.

"If it is all the same to you, I'll just keep on chewing spice brush
while I work," he muttered. "You are entirely too much of an astringent
to suit my taste and you bring a cent less a pound. But you are thicker
and dry heavier, and you grow in any quantity around the lake and on the
marshy places, so I'll make the size of the bundle atone for the price.
If I peel you while I wait on the sap I'm that much ahead. I can spread
you on drying trays in a few seconds and there you are. Howl your head
off, Bel, I