a peculiarly Western type. And there were
the three Johns themselves. Catherine con-
sidered it no treason to laugh at them a
little.

Yet at Waite she did not laugh much.
There had come to be something pathetic in
the constant service he rendered her. The
beginning of his more particular devotion
had started in a particular way. Malaria
was very bad in the country. It had carried
off some of the most vigorous on the prairie,
and twice that summer Catherine herself had
laid out the cold forms of her neighbors on
ironing-boards, and, with the assistance of
Bill Deems of Missourah, had read the
burial service over them. She had averted
several other fatal runs of fever by the con-
tents of her little medicine-case. These
remedies she dealt out with an intelligence
that astonished her patients, until it was
learned that she was studying medicine at
the time that she met her late husband, and
was persuaded to assume the responsibilities
of matrimony instead of those of the medi-
cal profession.

One day in midsummer, when the sun
was focussing itself on the raw pine boards
of her shanty, and Catherine had the shades