infinitely surpasses the trifling tenderness of lovers, it is vain to describe the assiduity the smothered grief and importunate beseechings before God which that chamber witnessed for weeks and months together; and to those on whom a blight so terrible has fallen, but found prepared for equal faithfulness and self-denying care, it is needless, as it must be harrowing, to describe the scene.

CHAPTER V.

A VERY IRREGULAR PRACTITIONER.

MR. BARTON was so little a practical man, had had so little occasion for the exercise of presence of mind, and, besides, was so awe-struck and bewildered, that he was utterly helpless in the first confusion of this heavy stroke. But the plump busy-body, who had, in happier days, been installed in the almost sinecure office of nurse, was a person who gloried in generally having all her wits about her, and it was at her suggestion that recourse was had in the first instance to the village apothecary, an individual whose name has perished from the roll of history, but whose deeds live and breathe in human monuments to this day. He had that estimable advantage over his fellow apothecaries-he was selftaught; and he had further left them in the shade by managing to compound a pretty extensive practice out of two separate and equally honorable professions. He was great in midwifery, but in secret and on dark nights he was equally great in farriery. He couldn't afford to sport a nag, and he was likely enough never to be in the position to command so profitable a luxury. Indeed, it may be doubted whether he had any ambition that way, for he was of a sluggish bodily temperament, to say nothing of his higher nature; and being much given to the fascination of the social glass and circle he deemed it quite sufficient hardship that he should be obliged to go once every twelvemonth as far as the four-lane ends, a mile and a half off, to usher farmer Bengeo's broad-faced sons and daughters into this lower world. His sphere of

usefulness was thus contracted in one direction, and furtively extended in another, without much likelihood of losing his professional status. But never had it figured in his wildest dreams, even when very drunk, that he should be summoned to the Hall, unless by the special invitation of the unfortunate grooms who not seldom grazed their horses' knees and daren't tell master; so that though at the one moment, when the messenger was thundering at his shop-door till the bottles shook upon the shelves, he was lording it high and mighty over the landlord himself in the parlour of the "Blue Bottle tavern, next door to his place of residence and business, it must be confessed that he had some palpitation of the heart when he heard the rat-tat-tat, repeated and urgent. But he said, merely "Drat it, they'll have my knocker off, if I aint sharp;" and with relaxed nerves, fumbling his little white hat, he took what he hoped would prove a short leave of his favourite haunt, and addressed himself to that sinuous policy by which he contrived to gain his back door, when he thought there was any body particular at the front, contrived further to dash cold water on his face and swallow a mysterious preparation of ammonia to make him sober before answering the knocker,—with a curse on the world at large for interrupting his professional experiments in the back kitchen. But we will be bold to say, that when he saw the dark livery of the Hall, and received the momentous summons to what was thought the death-bed of a squire's and clergyman's wife all in one, he couldn't have grown taller in his buckled shoes if he'd been a Dominican friar all his life, practising penance on one of his own worn-out racks. This astonishment produced a positive deterioration in the value even of his professional services; for his sense of importance had grown so unwieldy, that what with it and his recent potations, his progress in the track of the nimble and anxious servant man was much less satisfactory than it might otherwise have been. In due time, however, after repeated insults on his tardiness, such as,-"Keep steady, old boy,-take your time ;—I say, don't hurry yourself, don't !—come along, will you, old tortoiseshell;"- -we say, in due time the man of drugs was within the walls of the old mansion, had unbuckled his heavy

shoes and left them down stairs close to the door with his umbrella and great coat, and had stalked, with a proper degree of self-assertion, into the sacred scene of so much suffering, and so much love. Mr. Barton raised his drooping head in profound amazement; but the shock evidently revived him, for with much more petulance than was quite natural to him even at his worst, he said:

"Who on earth are you? And what do you stand staring there for ?what do you want?"

"Oh, sir, if you please, I'm proud and happy to see you in your present distress. My name is (but, alas! for perishable fame, we cannot give it in this place)-and very much at your service."

66

Oh, it's you, is it? I beg your pardon, I'm sure; it's very kind of you to come without being sent for !"

66

-(he

Oh, but I was summoned, Mr. Barton, and your servant can bear witness that it was at great personal, and, I may add, professional inconvenience, that I consented to comebegan to tremble for his fee, so he resolved to lay it on pretty thick)-but when I knew the lovely, in fact, I might say, 'the loveliest flower in all the dell' was, so to speak, drooping, I could no longer refuse, and you see I'm come."

"Well, Doctor (how he smirked at that, to be sure), you know we have had a heavy trial, and I'm afraid my dear wife has taken it too much to heart."

Oh, trust me, sir, we'll soon have her round again; nothing like taking these kind of things in time. It's well you sent for me."

"You mean, it's well you came, Doctor."

"No, I don't; if you did not send, your agent did, and that binds you, the principal, all the world over."

"Very well, so be it, my good man; you surely don't think that I should accept your services if I did not mean to pay for them?"

"Well, then, to business; that's all as should be. I never doubted you for a moment, sir, and besides, sir, I trust I'm not mercenary. Ah! (looking with great, round, bloodshot eyes into that holy place of pain and grief) a decided case of fever-can't give it a name just now, you know-very

bad, very hot, quick, sir, very quick (feeling her pulse), damned quick; but we'll stop his fun (pulling out his green silk pocket-book, where his three lancets slumbered rustily among tavern bills, and long-standing bills of various other matters, for and against his credit)."

But the clergyman whose cultivated mind was already in advance of many medical men, and who was inclined to be very cautious in the use of the lancet, gently dissuaded the indignant practitioner, and his remonstrances were ably seconded by the chubby nurse at the half-opened door, who almost screamed out, "For God's sake, master, don't let him do it,-Phil tells me he nigh bled the big black mare to death only last week. Let him go; he'll murder her outright-I can see it in his look, for all his grinning."

Indignation was out of place and useless under so serious a charge; so, preparing to back out as well as he could, the generous husband paid him, with a regard to his own husbandly love rather than to any intrinsic deserts, and the inflated apothecary vented his contempt for amateurs and nurses by a fervent prayer "that the sufferer might live till morning," and then by banging the door as loud as ever he could. At the hall door he came plump on one of the several physicians who had been summoned from the neighbouring town, and who had just then been wishing he could light on the individual whose ugly shoes and umbrella had nearly broken his gouty leg. The recognition was far from mutual; for the great Doctor, whom everybody knew so well, hardly knew anybody, for his part, except those whose tongues he had carefully studied; and certainly, if he had known the bloated little man in his stocking feet, he would have been slow to own that knowledge when any one was by. Others eminent in their profession speedily followed, bringing with them, to the relief and healing of the rich, the ripe experience they had gained-sometimes-at the expense of the sickly and smitten poor. Everything that their united wisdom could devise was put in course of operation, and they left the anxious husband and the family surgeon with the consoling hope that this sickness was not unto death. Well might it have been if their favorable pro

gnostic had been belied; but this is a hard saying, when we reflect on the unspeakable relief their words had brought to one mourning soul. He relied upon their skill, not daring to doubt or suppose that they could be wrong.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WATCHER AND THE DAWN.

NOR were they wrong. It was a wasting and a grievous sickness. But could the lovely sufferer have seen who nursed her, and how tenderly-could she have known the long, long agony of suspense, the exhausting night-watch, the weary days that seemed like weeks, the weary weeks that seemed like years, not from impatience, but only from the intensity of hope and prayer, and all-absorbing love for her; could her glance have rested for one moment on that bent and tottering form, or read the story of her own sorrow from that burning brow and feverish hectic cheek, or caught the strange tones of that hollow voice which she had so loved to hear in months gone by, truly she had wished to die. This blow had not fallen upon a whole heart, strong to bear, and full of its first fresh faith in God; but the bruise was yet sore, and the inward strength was all but spent in that great grief that had laid her so low. Not mere ancestral pride, nor the coarse ambition of the wealthy to transmit their name and build with it a tower of glory on which their own emblazonment might hang unsullied; these were not the feelings that had been blasted by the hand of death. Far other and more delicate were the emotions which had spread like the bay tree in that father's soul. All that new world of passion which his young wife had called into beautiful being, clothing it with the light of her own refined and ardent love, had been reproduced when his child had first rested in his arms. All the holiest aspirations of his own piety bounded with new force towards immortality, when he looked into the blue smiling eyes which brought a message from the skies, that he should train the babe for God. Devoutly had he received