in the pharmacopoeia?"

"Somewhere in these mountains," said the doctor, "there's a plant
growing--a flowering plant that'll cure you, and it's about the only
thing that will. It's of a kind that's as old as the world; but of
late it's powerful scarce and hard to find. You and I will have to
hunt it up. I'm not engaged in active practice now: I'm getting along
in years; but I'll take your case. You'll have to come every day in
the afternoon and help me hunt for this plant till we find it. The
city doctors may know a lot about new scientific things, but they
don't know much about the cures that nature carries around in her
saddlebags."

So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cure-all plant among the
mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge. Together we toiled up steep
heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch
every sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We
waded through gorges and chasms, breast-deep with laurel and ferns;
we followed the banks of mountain streams for miles; we wound our way
like Indians through brakes of pine--road side, hill side, river side,
mountain side we explored in our search for the miraculous plant.

As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find.
But we followed our quest. Day by day we plumbed the valleys, scaled
the heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous
plant. Mountain-bred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home
too fatigued to do anything except fall into bed and sleep until
morning. This we kept up for a month.

One evening after I had returned from a six-mile tramp with the old
doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk under the trees near the
road. We looked at the mountains drawing their royal-purple robes
around them for their night's repose.

"I'm glad you're well again," she said. "When you first came you
frightened me. I thought you were really ill."

"Well again!" I almost shrieked. "Do you know that I have only one
chance in a thousand to live?"

Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. "Why," said she, "you are as
strong as one of the plough-mules, you sleep ten or twelve hours every
night, and you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you
want?"

"I tell you," said I, "that unless we find the magic--that is, the
plant we are looking for--in time, nothing can save me. The doctor
tells me so."

"What doctor?"

"Doctor Tatum--the old doctor who lives halfway