d in one hand he had one of his best bottles full of
something awful to look at and that smelled worse, even through the
cork.

"Mister," he said, looking Father gravely and courteously in the face,
"you got cholera bad and might die to-night if you don't take medicine
quick. It's in this bottle; shake it well." And while the Idol made a
grab for him he put that bottle right in Father's hand and backed off
out of reach.

Roxanne was distressed at Father's having taken that awful smell into
his hands, and Mr. Douglass tried to make him give it back to Lovelace
Peyton; but Father wrapped it in two handkerchiefs and put it, smell
and all, into his pocket.

"Thank you, Doctor Byrd," he said, just as gravely as he talks to the
great surgeons and doctors that come to see Mother. "Shall I report my
condition to you to-morrow?"

"That medicine will work fine," answered Lovelace Peyton; "but if it
kills you, can I cut you open to see how you work inside? When
Douglass dies, I'm going to cut him into little pieces; he's done
promised."

"Oh, Lovey," was all Roxanne could say, while Father and the Idol both
roared.

I never saw my father's face so lovely as it was when he looked down
on that little raggedy boy as we left him swinging on the front gate.
His heart is softening away from wealth to his fellow-man, I know.
And, as if it had not made me happy enough to have Father sitting and
smoking with such a great character as Mr. Douglass Byrd, what should
happen but for us to meet Tony at our front gate, coming to see Father
especially? They made me go in and wait on the front steps while they
talked, because they didn't want me to hear; and they both laughed so
that Father tried to get out his handkerchief and succeeded in
dropping the awful bottle Lovelace had given him, while Tony leaned
against the fence and shook with chuckles at Lovey's giving him such
an awful smell. Oh, if they were to elect my father an honorary member
of the Raccoon Patrol like the Colonel and the Idol, I could not stand
the happiness. Tony's friendship for him gives me one of the deepest
joys that ever came to me. Tony's high sense of honor cannot help but
impress Father.

This little town of Byrdsville, that nestles down in a hollow of the
Old Harpeth Hills on the old pioneer road they called the Road to
Providence, when the first settlers traveled it from Virginia to
Tennessee, is the most wonderful place in the world, I think, and I
wish F