Ralph had failed to get two schools for which he had applied, and had attributed both failures to certain shrugs of Dr. Small.  And now, when he found Small at the house of Granny Sanders, the center of intelligence as well as of ignorance for the neighborhood, he trembled.  Not that Small would say anything.  He never said anything.  He damned people by a silence worse than words.

Granny Sanders was not a little flattered by the visit.

“Why, doctor, howdy, howdy!  Come in, take a cheer.  I am glad to see you.  I ‘lowed you’d come.  Old Dr. Flounder used to say he larnt lots o’ things of me.  But most of the doctors sence hez been kinder stuck up, you know.  But I know’d you fer a man of intelligence.”

Meantime, Small, by his grave silence and attention, had almost smothered the old hag with flattery.  “Many’s the case I’ve cured with yarbs and things.  Nigh upon twenty year ago they was a man lived over on Wild Cat Run as had a breakin’-out on his side.  ’Twas the left side, jes below the waist.  Doctor couldn’t do nothin’.  ’Twas Doctor Peacham.  He never would have nothin’ to do with ‘ole woman’s cures.’  Well, the man was goin’ to die.  Everybody seed that.  And they come a-drivin’ away over here all the way from the Wild Cat.  Think of that air!  I never was so flustered.  But as soon as I laid eyes on that air man, I says, says I, that air man, says I, has got the shingles, says I. I know’d the minute I seed it.  And if they’d gone clean around, nothing could a saved him.  I says, says I, git me a black cat.  So I jist killed a black cat, and let the blood run all over the swellin’.  I tell you, doctor, they’s nothin’ like it.  That man was well in a month.”

[Illustration:  MRS. MEANS]

“Did you use the blood warm?” asked Small, with a solemnity most edifying.

These were almost the only words he had uttered since he entered the cabin.

“Laws, yes; I jest let it run right out of the cat’s tail onto the breakin’-out.  And fer airesipelus, I don’t know nothin’ so good as the blood of a black hen.”

“How old?” asked the doctor.

“There you showed yer science, doctor!  They’s no power in a pullet.  The older the black hen the better.  And you know the cure fer rheumatiz?” And here the old woman got down a bottle of grease.  “That’s ile from a black dog.  Ef it’s rendered right, it’ll knock the hind sights off of any rheumatiz you ever see.  But it must be rendered in the dark of the moon.  Else a black dog’s ile a’n’t worth no more nor a white one’s.”

And all this time Small was smelling of the uncorked bottle, taking a little on his finger and feeling of it, and thus feeling his way to the heart—­drier than her herbs—­of the old witch.  And then he went round the cabin gravely, lifting each separate bunch of dried yarbs from its nail, smelling of it, and then, by making an interrogation-point of his silent face, he managed to get a lecture from her on each article in her materia medica> with the most marvelous stories illustrative of their virtues.  When the Granny had got her fill of his silent flattery, he was ready to carry forward his main purpose.