belay it, so to speak. And how are the mills running, gin'rally,
over at the Bar?"

"Captain Dick, hear me--if you ARE my friend, for God's sake hear
me! An hour ago I should have been a dead man--"

"They say that Sam Bolin hez sold out of the Excelsior--"

"Captain Dick! Listen, for God's sake; I have suffered--"

But Captain Dick was engaged in critically examining his man. "I
guess I'll ladle ye out some o' that soothin' mixture I bought down
at Simpson's t' other day," he said, reflectively. "And I
onderstand the boys up on the Bar think the rains will set in
airly."

But here Nature was omnipotent. Worn by exhaustion, excitement,
and fever, and possibly a little affected by Captain Dick's later
potion, Roger Catron turned white, and lapsed against the wall. In
an instant Captain Dick had caught him, as a child, lifted him in
his stalwart arms, wrapped a blanket around him, and deposited him
in his bunk. Yet, even in his prostration, Catron made one more
despairing appeal for mental sympathy from his host.

"I know I'm sick--dying, perhaps," he gasped, from under the
blankets; "but promise me, whatever comes, tell my wife--say to--"

"It has been lookin' consid'ble like rain, lately, hereabouts,"
continued the captain, coolly, in a kind of amphibious slang,
characteristic of the man, "but in these yer latitudes no man kin