"Why, thank you, madam, I will, if you can spare them," said Ralph. "I was also going to ask you to put me up a bite of something to eat and let me have a bottle of water."
"Surely I will," and the good-hearted woman, pleased with Ralph's engaging politeness, bustled off and soon returned with a paper parcel, a two-quart bottle of water and a little phial filled with a dark liquid.
Ralph insisted on leaving her twenty-five cents, and went back to his friend with a parting admonition "to be sure and give him the hot drops soon as he woke up."
Van was sleeping profoundly, and Ralph did not disturb him. He sat watching the slumberer steadily. Van seemed to have placid, pleasant dreams, for he often smiled in his sleep, and once murmured the refrain of one of Mrs. Fairbanks' favorite songs.
An hour later Van turned over and sat up quickly. Ralph had been somewhat anxious, for he did not know what phase his companion's condition might assume at this new stage in the case. Van came upright, however, and dispelled vague fears--clear-eyed, smiling, bright as a dollar.
"Hello!" he hailed--"locomotive, friend, embankment. You're Fairbanks?"
"That's right," said Ralph--"you remember me, do you?"
"Sure, I do. What's in the bundle? Grub? and the bottle? Water? Give me a swig--I'm burned up with thirst."
"This first," said Ralph, producing the phial, and explaining its predicted potency. "Half of it--now some water, if you like."
Van choked and spluttered over the hot decoction. Ralph was immensely gratified as he followed it up by eating a good meal of the home-made pie, biscuits and cheese with which the kindhearted woman at the nearest house had provided them.