skilled in the practice of rubbing,--and having made the incidental
discovery that she was a person not without magnetism,--he decided on the
spot to add her to the other attractions of Mud Springs ranch; and she
drove home with him next day, her trunk in the back of his wagon.

The place was no sinecure. Bricks without straw were a child's pastime to
the cures aunt Polly and the Springs effected without a pretense to the
comforts of life in health, to say nothing of sickness. Modern
conveniences are costly, and how are you to get the facilities for "pay
patients" when you have no patients that pay! Prosperity had overlooked
the Bruneau, or had made false starts there, through detrimental schemes
that gave the valley a bad name with investors. The railroad was still
fifty miles away, and the invalid public would not seek life itself, in
these days of luxurious travel, at the cost of a twelve hours' stage-ride.
However, as long as the couple had a roof over their heads and the Springs
continued to plop and vomit their strange, chameleon-colored slime,
Leander would continue to bring home the sick and the suffering for Polly
and the Springs to practice on. Health became his hobby, and in time, with
isolation thrown in, it began to invade his common sense. He tried in
succession all the diet fads of the day and wound up a convert to the
"Ralston" school of eating. Aunt Polly had clung a little longer to the
flesh-pots, but the charms of a system that abolished half the labor of
cooking prevailed with her at last, and in the end she kept a sharper eye
upon Leander at mealtime than ever he had upon her.

The ignorant gorgings of their neighbors were a head-shaking and a warning
to them, and more than once Leander's person was in jeopardy through his
zealous but unappreciated concern for the brother who eats in darkness.

He had started out one winter morning from Bisuka, a virtuous man. His