The seventh Jones was again too old; the eighth was a pale hobbledehoy; the ninth was a loathsome quack; the tenth had died that morning; the eleventh was busy; the twelfth was a veterinary surgeon; the thirteenth was an intern living at home with his widowed sister.  Colorado?  No, the widowed sister was positive he had never been there.  The fourteenth was a handsome fellow of about thirty-five.  He looked poor and threadbare, and I had a glimpse of a shabby bed behind a screen.  Patients obviously did not often come his way, and his joy at seeing me was pitiful.  I had meant to try a bluff and get in my Colorado question this time free of charge; but I hadn’t the heart to do it.  Slight pains in the head seemed a safe complaint.

After a few questions he said he would have to make a thorough physical examination.

“No clothes off!” I protested.

“It’s essential,” he said, and went on with something about the radio-activity of the brain, and the vasomotor centers.  The word motor made me feel like a sick automobile.  I begged to keep my clothes on; I insisted; I promised to come tomorrow; but it wasn’t any good, and in a few minutes he was hitting me harder than either of the two before.  Maybe I was more tender!  He electrocuted me extra from a switchboard, ran red-hot needles into my legs, and finally, after banging me around the room, said I was the strongest and wellest man who had ever entered his office.

“There’s a lot of make-believe in medicine,” he said; “but I’m one of those poor devils who can’t help telling a patient the truth.  There’s nothing whatever the matter with you, Mr. Westoby, except that your skin has a slightly abrased look, and I seem to notice an abnormal sensitiveness to touch”

“Were you ever in Colorado, Doctor?” I asked while he was good enough to help me into my shirt.

“Oh, yes, I know Colorado well!”

My heart beat high.

“Some friends of mine were out there three years ago,” I said.  “Wouldn’t it be strange if by any chance the Van Coorts—­”

“Oh, I left Denver when I was fifteen.”

Five dollars!

The fifteenth Jones was a doctor of divinity; the sixteenth was a tapeworm specialist; the seventeenth was too old, the eighteenth was too old, the nineteenth was too old—­a trio of disappointing patriarchs.  The twentieth painted out black eyes; the twenty-first was a Russian who could scarcely speak any English.  He said he had changed his name from Karaforvochristophervitch to something more suited to American pronunciation.  He seemed to think that Jones gave him a better chance.  I sincerely hope it did.  He told me that all the rest of the Jones family was in Siberia, but that he was going to bomb them out!  The twenty-second was a negro.  The twenty-third—!  He was a tall, youngish man, narrow-shouldered, rather commonplace-looking, with beautiful blue eyes, and a timid, winning, deprecatory manner.  I told