tly cooked Prime fished the leaves out of the
liquor with a forked twig, and carried the stew-pan to the brook to
take the scalding edge off of the ill-smelling decoction.

"Are you ready to be poisoned?" he asked when he came back.

"You're--you're sure it _isn't_ poison, aren't you?" she quavered.

"No, but I am going to be," and with that he shut his eyes, held his
breath, and took a long drink from the stew-pan of fate, disregarding
easily, in the frightful bitterness of the draft, Lucetta's little cry
of dismay.

"Merely trying it on the dog," he gasped when he put the pan down and
turned away so that she should not see the face contortions--grimaces
forthshowing the resentment of an outraged palate. Then he went to sit
on his blanket-roll to await results. "If--if it doesn't kill me, then
you can try it; but--but we'll wait a few minutes and see what it's
going to do to me."

When the results proved to be merely embittering and not immediately
deadly, he became a nurse again.

"I have left it as hot as you can drink it," he said, offering the
basin. "It seems as if it ought to do more good that way. Take a good
long swig, if you can stand it."

Lucetta put her lips to the mixture and made a face of disgust.

"Ou-e-e-e!--_boneset!_" she shuddered. "I'd know it if I should meet it
in another world--it takes me right back to my childhood and mother's
roots and herbs! I can't, Donald; I simply _can't_ drink all of that!"

"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged,
trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If the
horrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in five
minutes."

Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tucked
her up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made up
a roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhood
that fever patients ought to sweat. Past this, he made a sad cake of
pan-bread for his own midday meal, and when it was eaten he found that
Lucetta had fallen asleep, and was further encouraged when he saw that
fine little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.

It was late in the afternoon before she awoke and called him.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.

"Much better; only I'm so warm I feel as if I should melt and run away.
Can't you take at least one of the blankets off?"

"Not yet. You like to cook things, and I am giving you