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dirty shirt. "She's got the cholera, an' she 'II die, anthar'll be nobody left to keer fur her young uns!" he sobbed within hearing of the writhing patient.
"When did this suffering begin?" asked^ the Little Doctor, trying hard not to smile.
"Nigh on to half a day ago, mum. I druv like hell to git to this 'ere crick. I'd hearn of it afore I left the last camp."
"Have you a tent?"
"Lawd, no! nor nothin' else to speak of."
"But dogs and children!" the visitor thought, as she ruefully surveyed the scene.
"The steers have got the foot-rot. Kin you kore
emr ?'*
Yes, but we must first attend to the needs of your wife. Go to Captain Ranger. Tell him I sent you. Tell him I must borrow one of his tents and some physic and a bottle of * Number Six.' Ask for Mrs. O'Dowd, and be sure to say that Mrs. McAlpin wants her badly."
When Captain Ranger and his man Limpy appeared on the scene, bringing the tent and medicines, water was already boiling in a black iron kettle, the only cooking utensil in sight. The tent was soon pitched, and a bed prepared for the sufferer, who was writhing in convulsions.
"Any woman accustomed to the comforts of a wellordered home would have died," said Mrs. McAlpin the next morning, after the crisis was past. "But the average specimen of the poor white trash of the original slave States has as many lives as a cat."
"I didn't have no doctor," said the patient, as soon as she was able to be on her feet. "Thar was a woman yar, an' she giv' me some hot truck, but I jist kored myself."
The woman was telling her story to a visitor, who had called, partly from sympathy, but chiefly from curiosity; and Mrs. McAlpin, who was assisting Captai
