Danny had sat up all night with only a horse blanket drawn over his legs, taking care of a roan mare with the croup.  The helpless thing had lain flat on her side in the straw struggling for breath, and Danny, his heart racked with pity, had sat in the stall beside her, every hour giving her steam and gently pouring his own secret mixture down her throat.  Nobody but Danny cared what became of the mare, left there two weeks before by a stranger who had not returned for it; stolen, probably.  Cramped, stiff with rheumatism, half dead from fatigue and suffering from a bad cough himself, he left the stable at eight o’clock next morning, hopeful that the miserable beast would pull through, and stepped round to Salvatore’s lunch cart for a bowl of coffee and a hot dog.  He was just lighting his pipe preparatory to going back to the stable when a stranger pulled up to the curb in a mud-splashed depot wagon.

“’Morning,” he remarked pleasantly.  “Can you tell me if Mulqueen’s livery stable is anywhere about here?”

Danny removed his pipe and spat politely.

“Sure,” he replied, taking in the horse, which besides being lame and having a glaring spavin on its off hind leg was a mere bone bag fit only for the soap factory. “‘Tis just forninst the corner.  I’m after goin’ there meself.”

The stranger, a heavy-faced man with a thick neck, nodded.

“All right.  You go along and I’ll follow.”

Mulqueen was not yet at the stable and Danny helped unharness the animal, which, as soon as relieved of the shafts, hung its head between its legs, evidently all in.  The stranger handed Danny a cigar.

“I’m lookin’ for a vet,” said he.  “My horse ought to have something done for him.”

“I can well see that!” agreed Danny.  “He needs a poultice and hot bandages.  A bit of rest wouldn’t do him no harm, neither.”

“Well, I’m no vet,” returned the stranger with an apologetic grin, “but it don’t take much to know that he’s a sick horse.  I’m a doctor, myself, but not a horse doctor.  Have you got one here?”

“Some calls me a horse doctor,” modestly answered Danny.  “I can treat a spavin and wind a bandage as well as the next.  How long will you be leavin’ him?”

“Oh, a day or two, I guess.  Well, if you’re a veterinary I leave him in your care.  My name’s Simon—­Dr. Joseph R. Simon, of Hempstead, Long Island.”

Danny worked all the morning over the horse, doing his best to make it comfortable.  Indeed, before he had concluded his treatment the animal was probably more comfortable than he, for the night in the cold stall had given him a chill and when he left the stable to go home for lunch he was in a high fever.  Doctor Simon was outside on the sidewalk talking to Mulqueen.

“Well, doctor,” said he, “what did you find was the matter with my horse?”

“Spavin, lame in three legs, sore eyes, underfed,” replied Danny, shivering.  “Sure an’ he’s a sick animal.”