, I fear, than many a human body--that there are
few things more wholesome for us poor mortals than hearty, unrestrained,
unrestrainable, innocent laughter, had decided between them that, in
order to put his case beyond all human or superhuman possibility of
relapse, Sprigg should have some hearty laughter. Accordingly, they had
sent one of their dog-robed, dog-natured elves to tinker and conjure
with Pow-wow's tail, and through that sensitive member, as a medium,
telegraph, as it were, such fancies to his sober old noddle as should,
for a brief space, set him quite beside himself. In other words, set him
to acting the human, according to the monkey conception of the
character. A conception so nearly suits an occasional specimen of the
model race as scarcely to be deemed caricature.

And Sprigg did laugh--laughed till his sore sides ached--laughed "fit
to die," as they say, when they mean the very opposite--"fit to live."
After such a laugh, Sprigg was in no more danger of dying than had all
the doctors, with their doses; all the preachers, with their prayers,
stood between him and the grave. Of course, everybody else was laughing;
not but that they felt still more inclined to cry, so touching was it to
witness the old dog's clumsy playfulness and the little sufferer's
spasmodic merriment--for spasmodic it needs must be, as yet, though so
hearty, heart-easing and wholesome. Indeed, there are few things more
pathetical than the innocent mirth of the young heart, over whose
dawning existence has already fallen, though but for a brief space, the
shadow of the inevitable hour. And I will venture to affirm, upon the
strength of my own experience and observation, that if you, my gentle
reader, had been present and witnessed, without both tears and laughter,
the scene I am describing, you would be as fit a subject for a "putting
through" as ever was poor Sprigg; and that, sooner or later for your
fuller humanizing, you must run the Manitou gauntlet. And whether you
run it in red moccasins or in split-leather Yankee shoes, all one will
it be to Nick of the Woods!

CHAPTER XXIII.

Young Ben Logan.

Pow-wow was still performing, Sprigg still laughing, the rest of the
company still in a maze of delighted bewilderment, when, home from the
forest, in came rolling young Ben Logan. He had heard the good news at
the gate, and now, as if feeling there was no further need of his being
tender-footed, he came lumbering through