“All right,” said Paul.  But as he spoke his teeth struck together.

Henry closed the door once more, with himself on the outside.  Then he walked to the edge of the clearing, and looked back at the cabin.  He had been careful to choose the kind of wood that would give out the least smoke, and only a thin column rose from the chimney.  The wind caught it before it rose far, and it was lost among the great trees of the wilderness.  It seemed again to Henry Ware that Fortune was kind to them.

The single look sufficed, and then, drawing his long-bladed hunting knife from its sheath, he began to search the forest.  Henry Ware had been long a captive among the Northwestern Indians, and he had learned their lore.  He had gained from the medicine men and old squaws a knowledge of herbs, and now he was to put it to use.  He sought first for the bitter root called Indian turnip, and after looking more than twenty minutes found it.  He dug it up with his sharp knife, and then, with another search of a quarter of an hour, he found the leaves of wild sage, already dried in the autumn air.  A third quarter of an hour and he added to his collection two more herbs, only the Indian names of which were known to him.  Then he returned to the house, to find that the icy torrent in Paul’s blood had now become hot.

“I can’t stand this, Henry,” he said.  “We’ve got the door and window closed and a big fire burning, and I’m just roasting hot.”

“Only a little while longer,” said Henry.  “The truth is, Paul, you’ve had a big chill, and now the fever’s come on you.  But I’m Dr. Ware, and I’m going to cure you.  When I was up there among the Indians, I learned their herb remedies, and mighty good some of ’em are, too.  They’re particularly strong with chills and fever, and I’m going to make you a tea that’ll just lay hold of you and drive all the fever out of your veins.  What you want to do, Paul, is to sweat, and to sweat gallons.”

He spoke in rapid, cheerful tones, wishing to keep up Paul’s spirits, in which effort he succeeded, as Paul’s eyes sparkled, and a gleam of humor lighted up his face.

“Well, Dr. Ware,” he said, “I’m mighty glad to know what’s the matter with me.  Somehow you always feel better when you know, and I’ll trust to your tea.”

He meant what he said.  He knew Henry too well to doubt him.  Any assertion of his inspired him with supreme confidence.

“Now, Paul,” Henry resumed, “you keep house again, and I’ll find where our unknown friend got his drinking water.”

He took the iron pot that he had noticed and went forth into the forest.  It was an instinctive matter with one bred in the wilderness like Henry Ware to go straight to the spring.  The slope of the land led him, and he found it under the lee of a little hill, near the base of a great oak.  Here a stream, six inches broad, an inch deep, but as clear as burnished silver, flowed from beneath a stony outcrop in the soil, and then trickled away, in a baby stream, down a little ravine.  There was a strain of primitive poetry, the love of the wild, in Henry’s nature, and he paused to admire.