But he came home and
got some more and went back. And then he took the fever. There are
seven kinds of fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of
order by reason of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he
failed to cure the first fever, and then somehow he got the other six.
He is not a kind of man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and
always does what he thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed
when it appeared he was going to die.
But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it
in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it
over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his
patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to
find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to
Gibraltar.
Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be
out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain,
and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night
and shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up
with another man's property that he could not tell which were his
fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his
main object in going to St.
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