“Who wanted to kill you at the East?” asked Peter Brush, bluntly.
“Consumption, my friend. I inherit a tendency to that fatal disease. My mother died of it. Her mother died of it, and several other relations have in turn fallen victims to the scourge of the Atlantic Coast. Well, when I found the seeds ripening in my own system, and nature’s warning becoming only too plain, I took the hint. I knew there was only one course to take. I must abandon the East, and my flourishing practice, must give up furnace-heated houses, and live out of doors far away from the fatal east winds. It was a great sacrifice, for I was a successful physician, and I liked the life of towns, and the culture and advantages of Eastern civilization, but life was precious, and I did not hesitate.”
“How long ago was that, doctor?” asked Mr. Brush.
“Six years ago. I went across the plains to California. There I made some money and returned, but I could not stay long, for my old symptoms began to come back. I resumed my wanderings, and have spent more or less of the time since on the plains.”
“There’s a good deal of life in me yet, though I don’t look rugged.”
Indeed the doctor, with his slim, hollow cheeks, looked far from robust, but he was embrowned by exposure to the elements, and was tough and wiry, and as Mr. Brush found out, he had a good deal of endurance.
“You don’t look like a picter of health,” said Mr. Brush.
“No; but that’s partly because I am constitutionally thin. Our family doesn’t gain flesh easily. I am well, and my appetite is always good, sometimes inconveniently good, for I am often so situated that I can’t gratify it.”
“I’ve got a healthy appetite myself,” remarked Peter Brush.
“I’m not backward that way either,” said Tom.
“Does your horse come of a consumptive family, too, doctor?” asked Brush, slyly, as his eye took in the bony skeleton on which Dr. Lycurgus B. Spooner was riding.
“In one sense, yes. He can consume as large an amount of hay and oats as any of his race. But, my friends, before we leave this place let us pay the last rites to the memory of these poor fellows who have been cut off in the midst of health and life by the savages.”
“I say amen to that with all my heart, and Tom will help, I know.”