"What do you mean, Matilda?"
"Well, brother, not to mince matters, I think if you undress him I'll turn to and clean him up some. After that we'll put him to bed in the little room off the dining-room and send for a doctor. I suppose they have a doctor somewhere around here, haven't they?"
Levi puckered up his lips and frowned.
"I've questioned about that, too," he admitted. "There is a doctor—goes horseback with saddle bags and medicine chest on a circuit covering acres and acres. Kind of a medical bully; brings people into the world and hustles them out. Doses and cuts them according to his lights. He's off on a stabbing case back among the hills—some still, they say, has let itself loose. He will be back when he patches up the worst and turns the rest over to the authorities. Matilda!"
Miss Markham started.
"Yes, brother."
"I don't want any one to see or know about that boy until after we've seen the doctor. He looks badly used and starved to me, and I never turn a dumb brute off when its luck is against it, until I know what I'm turning it to. You get a tub of hot water ready and I'll tackle the lad now."
It was seven that evening when the doctor returned from the hills and was told the "folks from the North" wanted to see him. He did not hurry himself. He rested, ate, and changed his clothes and then sauntered down the road to the cottage. Sandy, the worst of him, as Matilda explained, lay in a comatose state on the narrow, immaculate bed with Bob, now fed and comforted, on the floor beside him.
"That's Morley's boy from Lost Hollow," the doctor drawled, as he gazed upon the restless form. "At first I wasn't sure. I never saw him clean before. As I passed through The Hollow to-day Morley came out and told me the news. The boy's left home; he's going to get an education somehow—the father said he had saved money."
"There's nearly thirty-one dollars in his pants' pocket," Matilda broke in accurately.