Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/48

42 from his mouth and nostrils when they picked him up, and the troopers advised me to "put him out of misery," but he was my little brother's pet, and, after some hesitation, I decided to take him home in a basket and give the problem of his cure the benefit of a fractional chance. Investigation proved that he had broken two legs and three ribs, and judging by the way he raised his head and gasped for air, every now and then, it seemed probable that his lungs had been injured.

The location of his grave had already been settled; but the next morning he was still alive and lapped up a pint of water. For twenty days and twenty nights the little terrier stuck to life and his cotton-lined basket, without touching a crumb of solid food, but ever ready to lick up a few drops of cold water, in preference even to milk or soup. At the end of the third week he made an effort to leave his couch, and a few days after contrived to stagger along the floor to get the benefit of a hearth-fire. He had broken his fast with a saucerful of sweet milk, but only on the evening of the twenty-sixth day began to betray a personal interest in the contents of a plateful of