CUPID IN THE WILDERNESS 



23 



And he told him. The doctor's advice seems to have 

 been — what a doctor's advice sometimes is not — the 

 proper thing, for the leg got well. But before the 

 man could call again to thank him for his mended 

 leg, the learned leech had vanished in the depths of 

 the wilderness and we saw him no more. 



The natives hereabout are, in money matters, what 

 the Scotch call canny. And some of them are canny 

 enough to give any Scotchman points and beat him 

 with ease. Listen to this. A storekeeper, " a native 

 here and to the manner born," had a mother. I don't 

 wish you to infer, however, that he differed in this 

 particular from any other storekeeper. He was a 

 dutiful son and doted on his mother, showing her 

 every mark of filial affection. This was, of course, 

 very commendable in him ; but she deserved it all, 

 for report says she was a "grand woman." In the 

 course of human events the old lady became " wor- 

 rited." Life's cares and troubles came so thick and 

 fast that they began to choke up the oil in her lamp 

 of life. It commenced to flicker and grow dim and 

 needed only a puff of apoplexy to put it out entirely. 

 When the end came the son's grief was touching, and 

 the more so as there was no place where he could obtain 

 a coffin nearer than a town three days' journey away. 

 The problem how to get there and back in time to 

 bury the old lady decently troubled his mind, for the 

 indecency of burying her in one of their common pine 



