Well, we went down to Mr. Moody’s room, and he was sitting up in bed with his knees drawn up to his chin and a hot-water bottle held to him.

“Look at your work, woman,” he said to me when I opened the door.

“I’m dying!”

“You look sick,” I said, going over to the bed.  It never does to cross them when they get to the water-bottle stage.  “The pharmacy clerk’s gone to a dance over at Trimble’s, but I guess I can find you some whisky.”

“Do have some whisky, George,” begged Mrs. Moody, remembering her brother-in-law.

“I never touch the stuff and you both know it,” he snarled.  He had a fresh pain just then and stopped, clutching up the bottle.  “Besides,” he finished, when it was over, “I haven’t got any whisky.”

Well, to make a long story short, we got him to agree to some whisky from the pharmacy, with a drop of peppermint in it, if he could wash it down with spring water so it wouldn’t do him any harm.

“There isn’t any spring water in the house,” I said, losing my temper a little, “and I’m not going out there in my bedroom slippers, Mr. Moody.  I don’t see why your eating what you shouldn’t needs to give me pneumonia.”

Mrs. Moody was standing beside the bed, and I saw her double chin begin to work.  If you have ever seen a fat woman, in a short red kimono holding a candle by, a bed, and crying, you know how helpless she looks.

“Don’t go, Minnie,” she sniffled.  “It would be too awful.  If you are afraid you could take the poker.”

“I’m not going!” I declared firmly.  “It’s—­it’s dratted idiocy, that’s all.  Plain water would do well enough.  There’s a lot of people think whisky is poison with water, anyhow.  Where’s the pitcher?”

Oh, yes, I went.  I put on some stockings of Mrs. Moody’s and a petticoat and a shawl and started.  It was when I was in the pharmacy looking for the peppermint that I first noticed my joint again.  A joint like that’s a blessing or a curse, the way you look at it.

I found the peppermint and some whisky and put them on the stairs.  Then I took my pitcher and lantern and started for the spring-house.  It was still snowing, and part of the time Mrs. Moody’s stockings were up to their knees.  The wind was blowing hard, and when I rounded the corner of the house my lantern went out.  I stood there in the storm, with the shawl flapping, thanking heaven I was a single woman, and about ready to go back and tell Mr. Moody what I thought of him when I looked toward the spring-house.

At first I thought it was afire, then I saw that the light was coming from the windows.  Somebody was inside, with a big fire and all the lights going.

I’d had tramps sleep all night in the spring-house before, and once they left a card by the spring:  “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!” So I started out through the snow on a half run.  By the bridge over Hope Springs Creek I slipped and fell, and I heard the pitcher smash to bits on the ice below.  But as soon as I could move I went on again.  That spring-house had been my home for a good many years, and the tramp didn’t live who could spend the night there if I knew it.