neys to the kitchen, where Aunt Candace was brewing her simples, and she watched them out of the corner of her eye.
"S'posen he 'd 'a' got kilt dead," she remarked; "what'd you 'a' done den? Better go 'long an' set down an' nuss yo'se'ves. I 'll nuss Jack Kilpatrick. An' 't won't be de fust time I 've nuss'd 'im all by myse'f needer."
Scolding and domineering, Aunt Candace went ahead with her brewing, and in a little while had a crock of dogwood-bark tea ready, as well as a red-oak bark poultice. Her remedies were simple, but she had the greatest faith in them. She applied the poultice to the wound on the shattered collar-bone, and compelled Jack to drink a tumblerful of the dogwood-bark tea. The dose was a heroic one, and bitter in proportion. To a certain extent both remedies were efficacious. The poultice was a cooling astringent, and the tea allayed the fever,—for somewhere in the dogwood-tree, between root and blossom, there lies the active principle of quinine. Jack fell into a deep sleep, from which he was only aroused by one of those remarkable events that could have occurred in no country but the American republic.
