"So am I," interjected Westover.
"But how can you? You've tramped all night and I've ordered a bath and a bed for you."
"Thank you sincerely. I'll enjoy the bath and the bed some other time. To-day I'm going to the Court House with you. I'll ride one of your plugs, if you don't mind, and may be you'll send a boy over to Wanalah with a note to my overseer. I want him to send a horse to the Court House to meet me—a real horse that I'll have a fight with every time I come to a gate."
Carley Farnsworth did not answer immediately. Instead he walked into the dining room under pretence of refilling his pipe—really for the sake of a good chuckle over his friend's condition.
"He's as fit as a fiddle," he said to himself. "He's full of vigor and full of fight. He's Westover of Wanalah again, and that's what I've been working for. That mountain air, and the hunting and fishing and rough tramping have done more for him than all the calomel, quinine and strychnine I've got in my saddle bags could do. It's great! And we'll crown the cure—Judy and I—by making him Senator. Really Judy is a great diagnostician in her way. It was she who found out what was the matter with Boyd and prescribed the remedy. I used to think she had only one medicine, that apple jack was her panacea. I know better now."
Then, with his pipe refilled, he returned to the parlor only to find it empty. Going to the porch he saw Westover astride a three-year-old filly that had been turned loose to graze in the house grounds. Without saddle or bridle the young man was gaily cavorting on the spirited mare's back and rapidly reconciling her to control of his will.
"Well, certainly he's fit," muttered the little doctor. "There aren't many men in Virginia who would prefer that sort of thing to a comfortable bed after an all night's tramp down a mountain side, over the roughest roads that adverse natural conditions, supplemented by the evil ingenuity of road supervisors, ever managed to create. Houp la! I'll dismiss him as cured. But we'll go on and elect him."
Then, as the negro boy for whom he had sent appeared, Farnsworth called out:
"I say, Boyd, I've a boy waiting for you here. Come and give him instructions."
And when Westover reached the steps, his host added: