quitoes that, bass and treble, hovered
around the child.

"What ails her?" asked Rolf anxiously.

"Dot ve do not know," was the reply.

"Maybe there's some one here can tell," and Roll glanced at the Indian.

"Ach, sure! Have I you that not always told all-vays--eet is so.
All-vays, I want sumpin bad mooch. I prays de good Lord and all-vays,
all-vays, two times now, He it send by next boat. Ach, how I am spoil,"
and the good Dutchman's eyes filled with tears of thankfulness.

Quonab knelt by the sufferer. He felt her hot, dry hand; he noticed her
short, quick breathing, her bright eyes, and the untouched bowl of mush
by her bed.

"Swamp fever," he said. "I bring good medicine." He passed quietly out
into the woods. When he returned, he carried a bundle of snake-root
which he made into tea.

Annette did not wish to touch it, but her mother persuaded her to take a
few sips from a cup held by Rolf.

"Wah! this not good," and Quonab glanced about the close, fly-infested
room. "I must make lodge." He turned up the cover of the bedding; three
or four large, fiat brown things moved slowly out of the light. "Yes, I
make lodge."

It was night now, and all retired; the newcomers to the barn. They had
scarcely entered, when a screaming of poultry gave a familiar turn
to affairs. On running to the spot, it proved not a mink or coon, but
Skookum, up to his old tricks. On the appearance of his masters, he fled
with guilty haste, crouched beneath the post that he used to be, and
soon again was, chained to.

In the morning Quonab set about his lodge, and Rolf said: "I've got to
go to Warren's for sugar." The sugar was part truth and part blind. As
soon as he heard the name swamp fever, Rolf remembered that, in Redding,
Jesuit's bark (known later as quinine) was the sovereign remedy. He had
seen his mother administer it many times, and, so far as he knew, with
uniform success. Every frontier (or backwoods, it's the same) trader
carries a stock of medicine, and in two hours Rolf left Warren's counter
with twenty-five pounds of maple sugar and a bottle of quinine extract
in his pack.

"You say she's bothered with the flies; why don't you take some of
this new stuff for a curtain?" and the trader held up a web of mosquito
gauze, the first Rolf had seen. That surely was a good idea, and ten
yards snipped off was a most interesting addition to his pack. The
amount was charged against him, and in two hours more he was back at Va