Dad's over at Eureka, buying logs, and I'm alone. Hello--wher yer
goin'?"

North had seized his hat and opened the door. "For a doctor," he
replied amazedly.

"Did ye kalkilate to walk six miles and back?"

"Certainly--I have no horse."

"But I have, and you'll find her tethered outside. She ain't much
to look at, but when you strike the trail she'll go."

"But YOU--how will YOU return?"

"Well," said Miss Robinson, drawing her chair to the fire, taking
off her hat and shawl, and warming her knees by the blaze, "I
didn't reckon to return. You'll find me here when you come back
with the doctor. Go! Skedaddle quick!"

She did not have to repeat the command. In another instant James
North was in Miss Bessy's seat--a man's dragoon saddle,--and
pounding away through the sand. Two facts were in his mind: one
was that he, the "looney," was about to open communication with the
wisdom and contemporary criticism of the settlement, by going for a
doctor to administer to a sick and anonymous infant in his
possession; the other was that his solitary house was in the hands
of a self-invited, large-limbed, illiterate, but rather comely
young woman. These facts he could not gallop away from, but to his
credit be it recorded that he fulfilled his mission zealously, if