matter of expediency. Why not try this one?
Where's the use of a mouth and an index finger if you do not smoke?"

Now, I cannot say why I do not smoke, except that there are so many
reasons why I should, and so I return to our first topic and ask, "Does
your medicine make the men well again?"

"No, no, decidedly no!" he replies--"they allow me to hold no such
illusion. The talismans they carry, work the cure--a bear's tooth, a
lucky penny, or the image of a calendar saint. A snake's rattle is a
panacea for anything but a broken heart. Time was when men only choked
on grape seeds as did the old poet chap, Anacreon, but in these days,
the navvies get appendicitis from them. It would be offensive to
suggest other causes, in spite of the fact that most of them never
taste grapes. No! it would not be right for me to put my patients in
the wrong and shockingly poor policy."

"Have you much trouble with drunkenness?" I query.

"Not a great deal!" he makes answer, "for the Mounted Police have a
disconcerting habit of probing into bales of hay and of finding false
floors in wagons. They have fifty-fox power, these police fellows,
although I have heard tell that a gallon or more of whisky has been
within roping distance of them and escaped. A bottle that gets by them
is worth ten dollars, but the navvies declare whatever it costs it is
worth it. But, dear me, there are other liquids for inordinate and
uncritical thirsts, such as----"

"Your medicine?" I suggest, whereupon our conversation abruptly ends,
for he will be no longer beset by me; and he will not give me a bottle
of liniment for "crick" in the back; no, not if I die in Edson, without
even a graveyard started wherein to bury me. He supposes Providence
knows his business, but how ever woman came to be made is a mystery far
beyond his wit's end.

Huh! Huh! I am tingling to scratch this man's eyes out, but I only
call him a brown pirate.

Do you think I care so much as a snap of the fingers for the medicine
of this spiteful doctor of the countryside? Not a bit of it! One of
the navvies will give me a talisman if I cannot find the cordial tree
for which I search. It grows in the North, and the fruit gives life to
strong people and faintness to the weak. It was Theophile Tremblay who
told me about it. He lives always in the woods. Once, he found the
tree but he was afraid to eat of it, for how could he know whether he
was strong or weak? He has hea