"No one knows. Years ago we painted several pieces of wood, and hacked some logs in a certain way for identification, then let them all float down and be sucked into that hole. None ever bobbed up at our end, and, so far as we ever heard, they were never found floating on other streams. I fancy the water rushes into some vast subterranean sea."
Zack came out with the beverage, Brent bowed to the Colonel, drank it and sighed. It was an atrociously strong toddy, purposely made so by the old servant to compensate for the long day's absence; and almost at once, especially as he had eaten nothing since breakfast, its strength began to tell.
"Zack, when Doctor Meal comes tonight, I wish you'd send him up to graft a dozen mule legs on me."
"Mule legs, Marse Brent!" the old negro peered at him.
"I haven't heard from Meal," the old gentleman laughed. "But there is a young doctor named Stone who will be here; he might do it."
There were, indeed, now two doctors in Buckville: the former old man with a soft name, who wore long whiskers which served to hide the missing collar and cravat, who had for forty years ministered to the needs of the surrounding country, who rode a pacing mare and carried medicines in a saddle-bag across her back;—and he of the hard name, who had lately come as graduate of the University, who visited the sick in a gasoline runabout of uncertain age which steered with a lever and heaved prodigiously, who wrote prescriptions to be filled at the drug-store. If Doctor Meal were not among his bees, or grafting pear buds, he might be found in a tilted chair on the sidewalk, beneath the giant locust trees which shaded the town's one pharmacy. But Doctor Stone's telephone was invariably answered by a trained servant who, if he were away, knew exactly where to find him. Perhaps in no other respects was the changing life of Buckville better illustrated than by these two doctors: the old and the new; the passing and the coming. And because it was the passing, Doctor Meal had not yet gone as far as the post office for his mail; but in less than an hour after the stamp had been cancelled on Stone's invitation, the Colonel received his acceptance by telephone.
"Well," Brent sighed, "I've got to get 'em somewhere!"
"You might gallop up stairs on the four you have," the Colonel suggested. "Our guests will soon be arriving."
"And Dale will beat you down," Jane called from the library.
"Oh, Jane, I'm all in," he groaned. "I can't, honest!"