s sleeve to
his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever
were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the
plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a
bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed
him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother
and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.

And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his
cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old
listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth
sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was
with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said,
"This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his
feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his
children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,--away
beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the
inhabitants never say, "I am sick."

It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's
family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered
for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors
understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted
nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr.
Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my
story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she
received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it
cost her her last dollar,--that she worked her slow way home as best she
could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown
torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold
her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her
sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the
great doctor's reputation.

"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another;
and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a
good joke.

Some said he could see right through a man: there was no need of words
with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or
the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for
it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be