paint-brush and experimented on the porch railing, where it seemed,
indeed, to be "green paint." In getting a nearer view, he touched his nose
to it and acquired a bright green spot on the tip of that highly useful
organ. Desiring to test it by every sense, he next put his ear down to the
railing, as though he expected to hear the elements of the compound
rushing together explosively.

"My hearin' is bad," he explained. "I wish you'd listen to this here a
minute or two, nephew, an' see if you don't hear sunthin'." But Harlan,
with his handkerchief pressed tightly to his nose, politely declined.

"I don't feel," continued Uncle Israel, tottering into the house, "as
though a poor, sick man with green insides instead of red orter be turned
out. Judson Centre is a terrible healthy place, or the sanitarium wouldn't
have been built here, an' travellin' on the cars would shake me up
considerable. I feel as though I was goin' to be took bad, an' as if I
ought not to go. If somebody'll set up my bed, I'll just lay down on it
an' die now. Ebeneezer would be willin' for me to die in his house, I
know, for he's often said it'd be a reel pleasure to him to pay my funeral
expenses if I c'd only make up my mind to claim 'em, an'," went on the old
man pitifully, "I feel to claim 'em now. Set up my bed," he wheezed, "an'
let me die. I'm bein' took bad."

He was swiftly reasoning himself into abject helplessness when Dick came
valiantly to the rescue. "I'll tell you what, Uncle Israel," he said, "if
you're going to be sick, and of course you know whether you are or not,
we'll just get a carriage and take you over to the sanitarium. I'll pay
your board there for a week, myself, and by that time we'll know just
what's the matter with you."

The patient brightened amazingly at the mention of the sanitarium, and was
more than willing to go. "I've took all kinds of treatment," he creaked,
"but I ain't never been to no sanitarium, an' I misdoubt whether they've
ever had anybody with green insides.

"I reckon," he added, proudly, "that that wanderin' pain in my spine'll
stump 'em some to know what it is. Even in the big store where they keep
all kinds of medicines, there couldn't nobody tell me. I know what disease
'tis, but I won't tell nobody. A man knows his own system best an' I
reckon them smart doctors up at the sanitarium 'll be scratchin' their
heads over such a complicated case as I be. Send my bed on to Betsey's but
write on it