sank backwards into his arms. He held her, watching her lovely face grow
whiter; her eyelids closed. She breathed slowly, leaning her whole weight
upon him.

Coming to herself, she smiled and said it was nothing. She had been that
way before. "But--we must go home. We must have a home--somewhere. I want
to see your mother. Paul, be good to her--forgive her--for my sake!"




XIX


PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS

Aunt Polly Lewis was disappointed in the latest of her beneficiaries. It
was nine years since her husband had locked up his savings in the Mud
Springs ranch, a neglected little health-plant at the mouth of the
Bruneau. If you were troubled with rheumatism, or a crick in the back, or
your "pancrees" didn't act or your blood was "out o' fix, why, you'd
better go up to Looanders' for a spell and soak yourself in that blue mud
and let aunt Polly diet ye and dost ye with yerb tea."

When Leander courted aunt Polly in the interests of his sanitarium, she
was reputed the best nurse in Ada County. The widow--by desertion--of a
notorious quack doctor of those parts: it was an open question whether his
medicine had killed or her nursing had cured the greater number of
confiding sick folk. Leander drove fifty miles to catechise this notable
woman, and finding her sound on the theory of packs hot and cold, and