“Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from New York—­just five minutes’ work!” and he gave the symbol of examination a flourish in emphasis.

“I don’t think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient on such occasions,” Jack returned.  “It is an easy function in this Arizona climate.”

He drew his shirt up from a compact loin and lean middle, revealing the arch of his deep chest, the flesh of which was healthy pink under neck and face plated with Indian tan.  The doctor’s eyes lighted with the bliss of a critic used to searching for flaws at sight of a masterpiece.  While he conducted the initial plottings with the rubber cup which carried sounds to one of the most expensive senses of hearing in America, Jack was gazing out of the window, as if his mind were far away across the cactus-spotted levels.

“Breathe deep!” commanded the doctor.

Jack’s nostrils quivered with the indrawing of a great gust of air and his diaphragm swelled until his ribs were like taut bowstrings.

“And you were the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five years ago—­and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see if you were really convalescent!”

“I hope the trip will do you good!” said Jack, sweetly.

“But it is great news that I take back, great news!” said the doctor, as he put the stethoscope in his pocket.

“Yes?” returned Jack, slipping his head through his shirt.  “You don’t find even a speck?”

“Not a speck!  No sign of the lesion!  There is no reason why you should not have gone home long ago.”

“No?” Jack was fastening his string tie and doing this with something of the urban nicety with which the doctor had folded his gloves.  That tie was one of the few inheritances from complex civilization which still had Jack’s favor.

“What have you found to do all these years?”

Jack was surprised at the question.

“I have just wandered about and read and thought,” he explained.

“Without developing any sense of responsibility?” demanded the doctor in exasperation.

“I have tried to be good to my horses, and of late I have taken to ranching.  There is a lot of responsibility in that and care, too.  Take the scale, for instance!”

“A confounded little ranch out in this God-forsaken place, that a Swede immigrant might run!”

“No, the Swedes aren’t particularly good at irrigation, though better than the Dutch.  You see, the Hollanders are used to having so much water that—­”

Jack was leaning idly against the table again.  The fashionable practitioner, accustomed to having his words accepted at their cost price in gold, broke in hotly: 

“It is past all understanding!  You, the heir to twenty millions!”

“Is it twenty now?” Jack asked softly and sadly.

“Nearer thirty, probably!  And shirking your duty!  Shirking and for what—­for what?”