Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/161

 it himself. He was a small, very old, dark-brown, and rodigiously wrinkled individual, who held up a candle and looked at Hannah with the most impassive eyes she had ever seen—like little pools of black water unstirred by any wind.

Hannah's breath came fast.

"Is this the Indian herb-doctor?" she asked. "Aye," he answered.

When you remember that Hannah was only a little girl, and that she thought she had come to the end of a night mare of responsibility, it will not surprise you to learn that she now began to cry a little, out of agitation.

"I have brought Ann Mary," she said, "my sister, to be cured. She is in a decline. Will you cure her?"

The herb-doctor showed no surprise. He set the candle down on the shelf, and went out in the bright star light to where Ann Mary clung to Remember Williams's waist. When he put up his brown old hands to her, she slid down into them and upon the ground. He still held one wrist, and this he continued to do for some moments, looking at the white, drooping girl without moving a muscle of his solemn old face. Then he turned to Hannah, who had stopped crying and was holding her breath in suspense.

"Aye," he said.

At this Hannah caught her sister around the neck, sobbing joyfully:

"He will cure you, Ann Mary; he will cure you!" Then she asked the doctor: "And how long will it take? We can stay but a few days, for the boy and the horses must get back soon."

The herb-doctor considered for a moment.