Ambrose's tongue was thickening, and his Adam's apple moving convulsively. "Is the disease so serious, then?" he whispered, feeling a hitherto unsuspected though general weakness creeping over him.
The doctor bowed his great head until his double, treble chin rested upon his shirt bosom, concealing his face from view. "Sometimes it's fatal, my boy," he returned, appearing so moved that his big voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. "It's true there's some that gets over it, but nobody ain't ever quite the same afterward."
Ambrose was trying to keep his knees from knocking together. "How have I showed symptoms of the disease?" he asked.
And Doctor Webb's whole body rocked slowly back and forth. "My son, you're showin' 'em uncommon bad this mornin'. I could notice 'em soon as I was ridin' up toward you; your colour is a-comin' an' a-goin', your eyes is shinin' unnatural bright, your heart is a-thumpin' too quick." And here he sighed, so that Ambrose braced his lean shoulders for the worst, although his lips were dry.
"Tell me quick, doctor; ef I kin bear it, what is it ails me?"
"Puppy love," the doctor shouted, and then giving his old horse an unexpected cut with his clean willow switch, off he drove, shaking with laughter.
"Puppy love!" Twice Ambrose repeated the words in a stupid fashion, and then his laughter rang out until it sounded like an echo of the older man's heavier roar. "Durn it," he said to himself, "ef that ain't just another way of sayin' 'Peachy'!"
When finally the traveller entered the shelter of a certain group of low hills near the Kentucky river, it was well past the middle of the afternoon, and there in a hollow he fed and watered his horse and then lay down behind a tree.