DOCTOR ZAY.

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

1882
 

I.

     "To my nephew, Waldo Yorke, of Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, all such properties of mine as are vested in shipping, timber, or lumber, in the town of Sherman, in this State."

     This was vague, but the more stimulating. What can compare with the bewitchment of arduous pursuit for uncertain privilege? There is an Orphean power well known to reside in testamentary documents, whereby the most insignificant legacy will draw the most imposing fortune to dance attendance upon its possession. But it is doubtful if Waldo Yorke, of Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, would have found himself inspired to a personal investigation of his departed relative's kind intentions concerning himself, but for a certain constitutional sensitiveness to this allurement attending the pursuit of unknown results.

      "Send a lawyer, Waldo." His mother had said this over the coffee for which she delicately prescribed the proper Yorke admixture from the Sèvres creamer. She spoke with the slightly peremptory accent which certain mothers retain, either from force of habit or from intrinsic delight in the sound, long after the expectation of filial submission has become a myth of the Golden Age. Mrs. Yorke was a handsome woman, who wore point appliqué. She was lame.

     Her son had reminded her that in sending Waldo Yorke he really was not far from doing the precise, if remarkable, thing of which she spoke.

     "Quite true," said the lady. "I had forgotten. Your having a profession so seldom occurs to one, Waldo. And cousin Don would have been glad to go, now the season is over at the Club. He has nothing else to do."

     "I am somewhat overborne with that calamity myself, mother," the young man had said, coloring slightly. "I don't think we will discuss the thing; I am going to hunt up Uncle Jed's legacy."

     Mrs. Yorke had not discussed the thing. Although not even indulgently talked of as "rising" in his profession, this idle, strong-limbed, restless son of hers had incisive preferences, with which she was familiar, as well as with his somewhat sturdy methods of executing them. And although they had only each other to be "beholden to" in all the world, -- that is to say, in Beacon Street, -- they were accustomed to yield one another the large liberty of assured affection. A summer of separation was to be expected, when one was the lame old mother of a nervous young man. Mrs. Yorke had kissed her son good-by royally, and here he was.

     Here he was, lazily riding at the laziest hour of the sleepy noon, -- he and the sensitive horse he had been so fortunate as to find in Bangor for the trip. He had been alone with the pony and his own thoughts, through the magnificent Maine wilderness, for now two long, memorable days. An older traveler than young Yorke would have found them valuable days. He had chosen the land route, seventy-two miles from Bangor. He had a certain kind of thirst for solitude, which comes only to the city born and bred; most keenly to the young, and most passionately to the overtasked. Waldo Yorke had never been overtasked in his life. He leaned to the splendors through which he journeyed, enthusiastically, but criticised Nature, like an amateur, while he drank.

     He had chosen the land route partly, perhaps, in deference to faint associations with wild tales of it, told him years ago by that myth of a dead uncle, in course of the only appearance he ever made in Beacon Street, -- Uncle Jed, whom his mother, somehow, never urged the child's going to visit, while never distinctly discountenancing it, either. Poor Uncle Jed was a good man, but had never had papa's advantages, my son. But my son had conceived a passing chivalrous fancy for an uncle at a disadvantage, and remembered sitting in his lap, and stroking his grizzled cheek with the soft pink palm of first one little hand, and then the other, and asking him why he hadn't any little boys, and if God left them in heaven, or forgot to send them down. Poor Uncle Jed was a bachelor, as well as a myth.

     So this was the wilderness where the good old myth had lived, loved -- did he ever love? his nephew wondered. Lived, loved, died. Nor lived, loved, got rich, and died; or lived, got rich, and died, as you choose to put it. What a place to live and die in! Or to get rich in. Or to love in, either, for that matter.

     The young man leaned against the cushions of the covered buggy, which seemed to arouse as much bewildered effort of the perceptive faculties in the stray natives whom he met as if it had been a covered mill-pond, and indulged in that hazy reverie which is possible only to ease and youth. What were his visions? What are the thoughts of a distinguished-looking young man, with one foot swinging for very luxury of idleness over the buggy's edge against the step, the reins thrown across one muscular arm, and both gloved hands clasped behind a rather well-shaped head. A young man with well-born eyes, and well-bred mouth; and he scorns to stoop to vices[,] who carries just such a fashion of the nostril and the chin.

     The route that young Yorke had chosen led him into the unparalleled deserts and glories of the wild Maine coast. Sudden reserves and allurements of horizon succeeded each other. They were finely-contrasted, like the moods of a woman as strong as she is sweet, and as sincere as she is either. Forest and sea vied to win his fancy. At the turning of a rein he plunged into an impenetrable green solitude. He became, perforce, a worshiper in Nature's cathedrals. Arch beyond arch, they lifted stately heads. Density within density, hung shadows in which it seemed no midday light could see to find a target. Welcome chills came from these shadows and struck upon the feverish cheek. Across them fled dry, unrecognized perfumes, clean and fine. Above, the dome of ether quivered with the faint, uncertain motion of hot air upon a summer noon. Drops of light fell through, upon the neutral-tinted shade that broke the sienna color of the winding road. As far as eye could see, the forest locked mighty arms before the traveler, as if to hold him to its heart forever.

     Then swiftly at the tripping of a cypress, at the surrender of an oak, at the fleeing of a rank of pines, at the shaking of a ghostly beard of moss, behold! the solemn barricade has given way. You have but turned a corner, yet the forest lets you go angrily, desperately, and yields you to the sea.

     Now the straight noon sunshine palpitates before, behind, about you. The road sweeps, yellow and lonely, past a dreary little hut, a solitary farm. The ruts worn by the daily stage, passed an hour before you, begin to grow distinct in the white heat. Rocks loom, a mass of wealthy outline against unbroken sky, and curved and curious beaches kneel to wet their lonely foreheads in the sea.

     Your cathedral has turned you out-of-doors utterly. Galleries of wonder beckon you on. Irregular sculpture starts, half-moulded, from the wild, gray cliffs. Sketches which Nature seems to have begun, but never cared to finish, unfold before you, vast, imperfectly interpreted, evanescent. Music, sweet from the now unseen birds in the deserted forest, sad from the waves upon the untrodden beaches, pulsates through the vivid air. It seems to the rider that the butterflies keep time to it; that the daisies in the gentle fields are nodding to it. Motionless cattle in the pastures, stray, solitary children on the fences, idle smoke from desolate chimneys, pass him by rhythmically. His thoughts, still busy with the forest, receive from all these things little else than a vague consciousness of the presence of life and light.

     Life and light! The words have a familiar and a solemn sound.

     Are they snatches from some forgotten sentiment of Holy Writ? John, perhaps? John, the golden-lipped, happy-hearted young enthusiast? What a poet that fisherman was! No wonder that modern dispute centres battling about the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. Life and light! In all the universe, those only were the two words that could interpret the summer-noon meaning of this virgin State of Maine.

     In all the universe -

     Nonsense!

     Yorke remembered that he was hungry, and would have his dinner. In all the universe, -- what then? Heaven knows! It was some mad fancy about womanhood, or youth, -- love, perhaps, if the truth must out; how a woman sometimes came to a man's life -- he had heard of such women -- suddenly, thoroughly, as upon the reserve of the forest had flashed the glory of the sea. Meanwhile, a man must have his dinner; a matter not to be ignored in dealing with ideal wilderness or ideal woman. He pulled the rein smartly over the nervous pony, reflecting, with the hardened cynicism of a bachelor of twenty-eight, that he would like to see the woman who would be Life and Light to him! I think, though, if we stop to look at it, that the young fellow preserved, after all, for his sacred metaphor something of the reverence which is native to all delicate natures; and that in the innermost of all consciousness, which we hide even from ourselves, the words held under covert of a sneer the fugitive of a prayer.

     With the fall from heaven to earth, discovering that he was hungry, the young man cherished a mild suspicion that he had strayed a little out of his way. Surely, the last reduced but hopeful sign-board had explicitly "arisen to explain" that it was six miles and a half to the town of Sherman. If he had traveled six miles and a half he had traveled ten since then, and of other guideboards, those ignes fatui in which he confided with the touching faith of youth and inexperience, there were none to be seen. Two, indeed, he had passed, valorously guarding a cart-path, but wind, weather, or fate had long since decapitated them. Over against their corpses one patient fellow stood on duty in a whortleberry thicket, for what concrete or abstract purpose no mortal could divine, with his head, from which all recognizable features were successfully washed away, held rakishly under his arm. Another, apparently a drunken, disorderly officer, seemed to have gone upon a spree, and tumbled face-down into a brook. But neither of these sources of Maine enlightenment had directed the dense Massachusetts mind to the town of Sherman.

     Bringing the entire force of the Massachusetts mind now to bear upon the non-appearance of any visible means of dining, a process in which the Maine pony showed a sympathy above all provincialism, the traveler accosted the first native he happened to meet, and something like the following conversation took place: --

     Yorke: "Can you tell me how far it is to Sherman, sir?"

     Native: "Hey?"

     Yorke: "Would you oblige me by saying how near I am to the town of Sherman?"

     Native, interrogatively: "Sherman?"

     Yorke, decidedly: "Yes; Sherman."

     Native, reflectively: "Sherm-an."

     A pause.

     "Travelin' fur?"

     "From Bangor to Sherman."

     "Oh!"

     "I fear I have got out of my way. I hope you can direct me."

     "Wall. You said Sherman?"

     Yorke, emphatically: "I certainly did!"

     Native, cheerfully: "Wall. If it's Sherman you're goin' fur, I sh'd ventur' it might be a matter of eight mile -- to Sherman. Hancock's nigher. So 's Cherrytown."

     Yorke, explosively: "But I do not wish to visit Hancock or Cherrytown!"

     "Oh, you don't. Wall."

     Native's wife, coming to the door, and standing with heavy hand raised, gaunt forefinger stretching down the road: "That's the way to Sherman: down that there gully, and take your second left and your fust right, and then foller the wind. But it ain't no eight mile."

     Yorke, lost in thinking how much she looks like a Maine sign-post: "Thank you, madam. How far do you call it to Sherman?"

     "It ain't a peg over six, -- Sherman ain't."

     Native's boy, pushing between his parents, and appearing vivaciously in the foreground: "It's three mile 'n' a half, mister! And you don't take your second left. You jest foller your nose, an' you'llll make it. Folks hain't been thar sence the old hoss died. I went one winter. I belong to the Sherman Brass Band."

     "It's true," said the woman, apologetically, "me and Mr. Bailey don't get to Sherman very often. But Bob, -- he don't know a mile from a close-pin."

     A prolonged pause.

     "Is there a hotel in this -- this metropolis?" asked Yorke, looking vaguely about the beautiful wilderness.

     "Sir?"

     "Is there a tavern in this village?"

     "No, sir."

     "Do you ever accommodate hungry travelers with a dinner in your own family?"

     "Wall, no; we never hev. They mostly go to Nahum Smithses."

     "Can I get anything to eat, in this desert, of Mr. Smith or any other citizen of your acquaintance?"

      "Wall, mebbe you might. Might ask. Nahum Smith is a gentleman as puts up."

     Yorke, reviving: "A gentleman that puts up? That sounds hopeful. How far is it to this gentleman's?"

     Native: "Two miles.["]

     Native's wife: "It's two 'n' a quarter."

     Native's boy, disrespectfully and musically! "'T ain't a mi-i-ile!"

     Yorke turned away with such gratitude towards this enlightened family as he could muster into expression, and set out grimly in search of the gentleman that put up.

     The woman ran after him for some distance through the dusty, blazing, blinding noon. He reined up, and she called kindly, gesticulating with her lean arms, "If you come acrost a woman ridin' in a little frisky wagin with an amberel atop, just you ask her. She'll know!"

     It was one of those coincidences which make, according to one's temperament, either the poetry or the superstition of life, that young Yorke, in the course of twenty minutes' savage and unsuccessful pursuit of the gentleman that put up, coming sharply to the top of a glaring hill, saw at the foot of it, dimly through the dust, a sight as foreign to the Maine wilderness as a sleigh to Florida or a barouche to Sahara. It was a pony phaeton. It stood before a gray old farm-house door, and the clean-cut, slender gray mare who drew it was tied to the crumbling fence. It was a basket phaeton, with a movable top of a buff color, -- a lady's phaeton, evidently.

     Yorke was as yet too inexperienced a traveler across country to know that in three cases out of five it is from a woman one will get most accurate geographical directions. He might have passed the pony phaeton with scarcely a serious remembrance of the advice he had received, but just before he reached the farm-house the owner of the carriage came suddenly out.

     She came suddenly out and down the grass-grown walk, with the nervous step natural to a person in habitual haste; but a healthy step, even and springing. Yorke noticed as much as this in the instant that he balanced in his mind the advisability of addressing the lady.

     For it was unmistakably, a lady.

     The young man -- being a young man -- took in with subtle swiftness a sense of her youth, for she was young; of her motions, which were lithe. Of her face his impressions were hazy. It might have been fine, or not. He seldom suffered himself to acquire an opinion of a woman's face at first sight; he had so often learned to hold such impressions as frauds on his intelligence. Her dress, he thought, was blue, or black, or blue-black, or black-and-blue. What did it matter? She was already escaping him, and with her, apparently, his only mortal hope of dinner. What superhuman power could do for a man even in the Maine wilderness he would not dogmatically decide, but his confidence in human assistance was at that faint ebb produced by prospective starvation; and Mr. Nahum Smith, or any other gentleman that put up, he had begun to locate with other interesting and amusing myths with which his education had made him familiar.

     The young lady had untied her horse (with the quickness of a practiced driver), had swept into the phaeton, had gathered the reins, and was off. If she had noticed him at all, it was in a busy fashion, with the single quick, abstracted glance usual to strangers in a crowd, in vivid contrast to the Down-East stare. Yorke felt that it was becoming a desperate case. He reined in the Bangor pony.

     "I beg pardon, madam!"

     The basket phaeton, just whirling away, came to a pause unconcernedly.

     "I beg pardon for the liberty, but will you direct me to the town of Sherman?"

     Something in Yorke's accent of desperation was funny. The young lady's eyes twinkled for an instant. She looked as if she would have laughed if she had dared. But she answered him with grave politeness.

     "It is four miles to Sherman."

     "Thank you." The young man sat, with his hat raised, hesitating. "I ought to apologize for troubling a lady. But I have met nothing but dislocated sign-posts and admiring natives for ten miles. One gave me as correct information as another. Is Sherman the nearest place where I can get a dinner?"

     "I think it is," said the young lady. "Yes, I know it is. If you take your first left below here, you will find it an easy four miles." She spoke with the unconscious ease with which, perhaps, only an American lady could have addressed a stranger met upon an unknown errand on a solitary road; but she gathered her reins as she spoke.

     "I am extremely obliged to you," persisted Yorke. "You said the second left?"

     "I said the first left. I am going to Sherman. If your horse is not too tired to keep distantly in sight, my phaeton will direct you without further trouble."

      She spoke as simply as one gentleman might have spoken to another. Yorke, too profoundly grateful to her to notice this at first, remembered it as the gray mare sped away through the hollow.

     How exquisitely it was done! The Beacon Street gentleman felt a glow of appreciation of the little scene, viewed purely as a specimen of the religion of good manners. He would have liked his mother to see it. It was the sort of thing she could estimate at its worth.

     "Going to Sherman," what a divine Christian recognition of the fact that he was a stranger, and the Maine wilderness had taken him in! Even that though a man, he might yet be a gentleman, out of his way, misdirected, tired, perplexed, and hungry. "If his horse were not too tired," -- what a delicate fashion of comparing the exhausted and now abject-looking Bangor pony with her own sturdy little steed! "Distantly in sight," -- could language [ ] more? Faint, swift, maidenly afterthought to the kindly impulse! Yorke had wrought himself into rather a glow, perhaps, by dint of present gratitude and promised dinner, but that simple little speech certainly seemed to him, as he thought of it, a classic in its way.

     Meanwhile, the "frisky wagin" had tripped along over knoll and hollow, and the bright "amberel atop" had turned into the thickly-wooded road and disappeared from view. Waldo Yorke whipped up and hurried on.

     Distantly in sight, indeed! Was there an innocent sarcasm in that womanly thrust? The gray mare could make her eleven miles an hour easily, if put to it. The Bangor pony begged piteously now at six. The basket phaeton flew to Sherman. The buggy struggled after. The mare put her head down, and trotted straight and stiff, -- a steady roadster. The buggy followed by the fits and starts, the turns of elation and depression, the jerks of hope and lurches of despair, familiar to drivers of nervous ponies at the end of a steady pull. Distantly in sight! He should do well, indeed, if he kept a mirage of her in sight.

     They had turned now quite away from the coast-line. The scattering farms, the tiny huts with enormous barns attached, the intelligent natives, the heavy stage-track, the dust, the glare, the cliffs, the sea, had vanished. The forest opened its arms again to the travelers, and the world grew green and cool.

     Off the stage-road here, the density seemed deeper, the shadow more abandoned. Through the impressive solitude the gay little phaeton cover danced along; through it the solemn black buggy-top lumbered and climbed. The figure of the dainty driver in the phaeton, erect, slender, and blue, sat motionless as a caryatid out of employment. The eyes of the traveler in the buggy vigilantly pursued it; chiefly, it must be admitted, because he wanted his dinner; possibly, in part because he fancied the pose of the caryatid, -- any man would.

     The shadow deadened as they rode, but not from the darkening of the day. On either hand the solid serried oaks seemed to step out and press against the narrow drive-way; thickets, whose black hearts relieved the various outlines of wild blackberry, sumach, elder, and grape, netted themselves more tightly, and grew stiff, looking like bronze; the aspens and pallid birches wooed one another across the narrowing road. Vistas of soft gloom stretched on. There was no light now, but flickering needles, fine as those of the pines, and drifting with them, that with difficulty pierced the opaque green heavens of the over-reaching trees. One looked twice in the low tone of the place even to see what the roadside flowers were. Yorke had almost passed unnoticed an apple-tree in full blossom, and it was past the first of June. Nothing could have so vividly presented to him a sense of the painful Maine spring, and the frozen, laggard life that looked out from behind it upon a gentler world.

     It occurred to him for the first time, as the depth and solitude of the road made themselves fully manifest, to wonder if the young lady felt no hesitation in trusting herself to drive over it alone. Apparently, he had here some society girl, whose whim it was to be unfashionable, and in Maine, at this unusual season. She was a little intoxicated with Nature's grand unconventionality; had no more fear, it seemed, than a butterfly released from a chrysalis.

     He wondered if she did him the credit not to take him for a cut-throat. But a grim glance at the widening distance between the phaeton and the buggy strangled this bit of self-satisfaction at its first breath. Plainly, the case involved not so much a high opinion of the man as a low one of the horse.

     Those delicate lovers, the birch and aspen, and the more ardent ones, the oak and hickory beyond them, were now making themselves obnoxious, as lovers always do to third parties, and swept a fragrant and defiant arch low across the way. Swift in the passing, the buff umbrella went deftly down. Slow in the following, the buggy-top groaned back.

      The blue caryatid was daintily cut now against the heavy shadow. Fine pencilings of light fell on her: she wore, it might be, a straw hat, which caught them; they struck her hair too, and her shoulder. She stirred but once. Then she turned to break some apple-blossoms. She picked the flowers at full speed and standing.

     Yorke, as he watched her with the half-amused attention of a traveler who has nothing better to do than to "follow the duty nearest him," got the jingle of Lucy Gray into his head:
 

      "O'er rough and smooth she trips along

           And never looks behind."

And now Yorke put his case to the Bangor pony, and despairingly relinquished it. The buggy lagged dead at the foot of the hill. The phaeton speeding across the hollow, reached the crossing of the ways, turned a sudden corner, and was gone.

     "And never looked behind" sighed the young man, out of temper with the pony, or the jingle, or what not.

     "And sings a solitary song

          That whistles in the wind."

     When the Bangor pony panted up to the crossroads, the phaeton had vanished utterly. The caryatid had become a dream, a delusion, a slender and obliging deceiver. Four solitary roads pierced the forest at four separate green angles. A dull sign-board stood in the square, and the traveler hastened gratefully to it. It bore in faded tints, once red and yellow and inspiring, an advertisement of Hooflands' German Bitters.

     Blue caryatides indeed! In what hues less intellectually respectable was the young woman perhaps portraying him by this time to the summer people at Sherman, a party of gay girls like herself?

     The young man bit his lip somewhat distinctly, for a Bostonian, and stood for a moment irresolute in the heart of the cross-roads, uncertain which of the four narrow wooded ways looked least as if it ended in a cranberry swamp, or a clearing, or other abstractly useful but concretely dinnerless locality.

     Suddenly, his eye caught the soft, irregular outline of some small object lying in the dust, a rod or so down the direct road. He drove up to it. As he approached it grew pink, as if it blushed. It was an apple-blossom.
 
 

II.

      YORKE'S faith in woman rallied. If the caryatid meant it, -- and a caryatid might be capable of just such a picturesque procedure, -- it was very delicately done. If she did not mean it, at all events he had got scientifically past the crossroads on his way, and she had got successfully out of it. He picked up the apple-blossom, and drove on. It could not have been ten minutes before his dumb guide brought him abruptly from the forest almost into the heart of the village.

     The little town of Sherman slept peacefully in the afternoon sun. No one seemed to be astir. No glimmer of a phaeton cover shone across the hot, still street. The caryatid was gone, -- where, it really did not occur to the young man to wonder. He and the Bangor pony forgot her with equal rapidity and success, in the leisurely hospitality of the Sherman Hotel.
 

     SHERMAN, MAINE, June 5th.

     MY DEAR MOTHER, -- I hope you promptly received the letter I mailed from Bangor. Another went, also, from some indefinite locality in the Maine wilderness: they called it a post-office; I believe it was a town-pump - or an undertaker's; but my memory is not precise on this point.

     I am just settled and at work. Uncle Jed's affairs are a mesh as fine as that eternal tatting Lucy Garratt used to bring over to our house, when she was a school-girl. My regards to the Garratts, by the way, when you write.

     It threatens to be a process of some weeks to unravel my tatting, and I have taken lodgings with Uncle Jed's executor. I stood the Sherman Hotel for twenty-four hours. I've saved one of their doughnuts for a croquet-ball, to complete our imperfect set. Direct your letters, if you please, care Isaiah Butterwell, Esq.

     In Isaiah Butterwell I find a genuine "fine old country gentleman," and Uncle Jed's confidential and devoted friend. He is a man of property, influence, and honor in this place. It is kind in them to take me in. Mrs. Isaiah says she is glad of my society. She, by the way, has an eye like a linnet and a tongue like a Jonathan Crook pocketknife, and a receipt for waffles which in itself has reconciled me to Sherman society for indefinite lengths.

     I seem to be the only member of the family besides the united head. It is a huge house, with wings, dead white, and reminds me of a Millerite robed and wondering why he can't fly. We seem to live a good deal at one side of the house, and one of the wings belongs to me. I have not explored as yet beyond my own quarters and the dining-room. Strain the Beacon Street imagination, if you can, up to the level of waffles for tea! She asked me, too, if I would have feathers or hair, and did I prefer woolen sheets? The house is perfectly still, and altogether delightful. As I write, a single sound of wheels breaks the deep, sweet country silence. They roll softly up and past my window to the barn; probably Mr. Butterwell has been to the prayer-meeting, a dissipation to which his good wife endeavored to decoy me. Rather late for a prayer-meeting, too. Mr. Isaiah drives a good horse, I perceive.

     Speaking of good horses, I lost my way, coming on, and was piloted through the forest by a caryatid in a basket phaeton. Remind me to tell you about her when I get home.

     To-morrow I drive out about twelve miles along the coast, to see a man who knows another man who has heard of a "widder lady" who stands ready to purchase certain shares of a certain ship which come into poor Uncle Jed's legacy. They launch their ships in salt brooks here, and trustfully tug them out in search of the sea. I shall convert all these wandering investments into cash as soon as possible, at any reasonable sacrifice, for I fancy there can't be more than three or four thousand involved at most. The property is widely scattered, much of it in local loans, like that of most Maine merchants. My share, as you remember, is more concise. Write when you can. Remember me to cousin Don. Don't miss me. It doesn't pay. Your affectionate son,

     WALDO YORKE.
 

     Waldo Yorke had started in search of the post-office to mail this letter, when Mrs. Isaiah Butterwell followed her guest to the door, and stood, while he was gathering the reins over the now gayly-recuperated Bangor pony. Mrs. Butterwell was a well-dressed woman, in the Maine sense of the term. She had a homely, independent face, with soft eyes, -- not unlike a linnet's, as Yorke had said. She regarded him closely for a moment, and without speaking.

     "What a charming day!" said Yorke, feeling it necessary to be polite even at the expense of originality.

     "I'm too busy to bother with the weather," replied Mrs. Isaiah, briskly. "Can't spare the time for that Down East."

     "Indeed! That is a frugal sentiment, at all events," Yorke ventured.

     "There's no sentiment about it," retorted Mrs. Butterwell. "It's sense; as youn' find out if you lived here. If I'd spent myself noticing weather, I should have been in my grave ten winters ago. Are you fond of young women?"

     The linnet put this startling question with gentle eyes, in which it was impossible to capture a ray of satire or of fun.

     "As I am of the State of Maine, -- with reservations," said Yorke guardedly, visions of Sherman "society" presenting themselves at once.

     "Are you fond of an early dinner, then?" pursued Mrs. Butterwell, with the serene air of one who clearly sees the links of her own syllogism.

     "Passionately, madam."

     "We dine," said the hostess, bowing herself away with a certain dignity, "at half past twelve."

     "I will be at my post," said the guest, smiling, "dead or alive!"

     "I wouldn't say that if I was you," urged Mrs. Isaiah Butterwell, returning to the door-step, and looking gravely at the young man. "I've always thought, if I'd been God, In' have been tempted to take people up that way, just for the sake of it. Talk about his tempting folks! Folks throw a terrible lot of temptation in his way. But there it is. It just shows he isn't made up like other people, after all. How that horse of yours does fuss!"

     The Bangor pony was nervous indeed that morning; highly grained, after the journey, in Mr. Isaiah's generous stable. The buggy sped along the village street with emphasis.

     It is doubtful if the caryatid would have offered her services as guide to its occupant that day, through the beautiful heart of the forest, four miles deep.

     Waldo Yorke, as he clattered through that pleasant representative Maine town, where the meeting-house, post-office, and "store" were the important features, and impressed him chiefly as reminiscences of American novels which he had tried to read and failed at the third chapter, amused himself by a rapid acquaintance with the business signs.

     "Goodsell, Merchant." "Cole and Wood: Lumber Dealers." "Dr. A. Lloyd." "Coffins, cheap for Cash." "Smith and Jones, formerly Jedediah Yorke," - and so on. He got these things into his head as he had the rhyme of Lucy Gray, the day before, with that idiocy which asserts itself in this exasperating form, and which threatens to prove the human intellect more lawless than the passions or the will. He found himself particularly a victim to the cheerful refrain of Coffins, cheap for Cash."

     His host overtook him before he had driven far. Mr. Isaiah Butterwell, as Yorke had observed, shared the apparently well-spread Maine appreciation of a good horse. He reined up his heavy, handsome sorrel, and the two men rode abreast for a mile; they chatted, across wheels, of horses, the estate and Uncle Jed, and Maine politics, and the price of lumber, and horses again. The Boston boy listened deferentially to the gray Maine merchant; perceiving in him something of the same rugged dignity that Uncle Jed had borne in Beacon Street. Yorke felt that here was a king in his own country; he regarded the hard-worked man with respect, and pleased himself with drawing his points out, and storing them up, so to speak, with a sense of increasing one's knowledge of "types."

     "I 've got to leave you, to collect some interest," said Mr. Butterwell presently. "That's my turn, -- the first right. You keep straight on till you find your man. Drive easy over the bridges. They're plaguey rickety, some of 'em. That pony of yours ain't used to 'em in Bangor. Back to dinner? Hope so. There, now, I wonder if my wife has told you -- whoa! -- told you about -- whoa, Zach Chandler! -- about -- Whoa!"

     "Oh, yes, she told me!" called Yorke politely, as the two horses nervously parted company. He looked, laughing, back to watch the old man, thinking how sacred their dinner hour was to these two lonely people; how large all little events must be in lives like theirs. His heart was full of a gentle feeling, half deference, half compassion. Mr. Butterwell's gray hair blew in the wind; he held the reins wound double over his knotted wrist; he sat with left foot forward. Zach Chandler was a long-stepping horse. Waldo Yorke, looking over his shoulder, saw and long remembered that he saw these trifling things. Suddenly he felt a thrill in the reins at which his own horse was tugging steadily and sensibly. He turned his head, to see the Bangor pony tremble, rear, and leap; to see the loose yellow boards of a murderously-laid bridge bound up; to see that there was no railing; to perceive a narrow streak of black -- water, presumably; and to know that he was scooped into the overturned buggy-top, and dragged, and torn, and swept away.

     The whole thing may have taken three minutes. All that occurred to the young man quite clearly, as he went down, was, "Coffins, cheap for Cash."
 

     Against the blackness of darkness a blur appears; it stirs; it has extension and intension; it throbs and thrills, and with the eternal wonder of creation moving upon chaos, there is light. After all, bow easy a matter it was to die! And coffins in Maine are cheap for cash. How could a man have believed that a process so abnormally dreaded for nearly thirty years could be, in truth, so normal and so deficient in the extreme elements of agony? To be sure, there was one crashing blow; a compression of some endurance within narrow limits; but he had suffered as much from neuralgia, far more from the prospect of death.

     How clearly and distinctly, though slowly, vision returns, in this new condition! There is a handsome old lady in a point appliqué cap. Like the child of Allah, she "goeth lame and lovely.'' By the way, will one make the acquaintance of a man like Lamb, in the society to which one is now to be introduced? Yes; still the old lady in the lace cap. She is sitting by the library grate, alone; her crutch has fallen to the floor; a yellow telegraph envelope is on the hearth; she is not weeping, but her face is bowed; she looks very old; the lines about her mouth are pinched; she has a haggard color. It seems easy to speak to her. How easy! Mother? Mother! She does not lift her head. Mother! It is true what we were told, then. The living do not hear. The dead may cry forever. A horrible deafness has fallen upon her. A man would have liked to see her once, -- to say good-by, or to have her sit by him a few minutes. Yet it seems there is a woman here. That is a woman's hand which rather hovers over than holds me. How cool it is! How delicate!... Ah, no! Remove your hand! It does not caress; it tears me. Remove your hand! I am in agony. What in the name of life and death has happened to me in this accursed wilderness? Was there anything in those old-fashioned dogmas after all? Take off your hand, I say! I know I might have been a better man, but I 've tried to be clean and honest. I don't say I'm fit for heaven, but I don't deserve this. You torture me.     Remove your hand! Am I in - "

     "You are in your own room, sir," said Mrs. Isaiah Butterwell, distinctly.

      "Ah! -- so I see."

     Yorke tried to lift his head; it fell back heavily, and he felt blood start.

     "Madam, you are very good. I must have been troublesome. I thought I was -- dead."

     "I'm sorry for you, Mr. Yorke, but I must say that I don't approve of your theology," said his hostess, grimly.

     "I dare say. I would not have offended you if -- Ah, how weak I am!"

     "Yes, sir."

     "Am I much hurt?"

     "Some, Mr. Yorke."

     "How much? Answer me. I will have the truth. The blood flows -- see! when I even think that you may be deceiving me. Am I terribly hurt?"

     "I am afraid so, sir."

     A heavy silence falls.

     "Shall we telegraph for your mother, sir?"

     "My mother is crippled. No."

     "For any sister, or anybody?"

     "I have no sister."

     "Mr. Butterwell will write."

     "Where is the doctor? I should like to see him first. You have called a doctor?"

     "Oh yes, sir."

     "Where is he?"

     "The doctor left about five minutes ago."

     "What does he say?"

     "Very little."

     "I wish to see the doctor before my mother is written to. Call him back! -- if you please.... Call him back, I say! Why do you hesitate? I may be a dead man in a few hours. Do as I bid you!"

     "The doctor said, Mr. Yorke" --

     "Said what?"

     "Said that -- sh, Isaiah! -- he was to be the judge when it was best for you to see your physician. If you asked, I was to say that you will have every possible attention, and I was to say that all depends on your obedience."

     "That sounds like a man who understands his business."

     "Oh, indeed, sir, that is true! Our doctor."

     "Oh, well; very well. Let it go. I must obey, I suppose. Never mind. Thank you. Move me a little to the left. I cannot stir. I am unaccountably sleepy. Has the fellow drugged me? I think perhaps I may -- rest" --

     He did, indeed, fall into sleep, or a stupor that simulated sleep; he woke from it at intervals, thinking confusedly, but without keen alarm, of his condition. The thing which worried him most was the probable character of this Down East doctor upon whose intelligence he had fallen. "The fellow absolutely holds my life in his hands," he said aloud. It was hard to think what advance of science the practitioner undoubtedly represented. Dreamily, between his lapses into unconsciousness, the injured man recalled a fossil, whom he had seen, on his journey from Bangor, lumbering about in a sulky at one of the minor stage stations; a boy, too, just graduated, practicing on the helpless citizens of Cherrytown, - was it? No, but some of those little places. Then he thought of some representatives of the profession whom he had met in the mountains [monntains], and at other removes from the centres of society. He understood perfectly that he was a subject for a surgeon. He understood that he was horribly hurt. He thought of his mother. He thought of his mother's doctor, whom he had so often teased her about. In one of his wakeful intervals, another source of trouble occurred to him for the first time. He called to his hostess, and restlessly asked, "I suppose there isn't a homœopathist short of Bangor?"

     "Our doctor is homœopathy," said Mrs. Butterwell, instantly on the defensive; "but you need not be uneasy, sir, for a better, kinder" --

     "My mother will be so glad!" interrupted the young man, feebly. He gave a sigh of relief. "She would never have been able to bear it, if I had died under the other treatment. Women feel so strongly about these things. I am glad to know that -- for her sake, -- poor mother!" He turned again, and slept.

     It was late evening when he roused and spoke again. He found himself in great suffering. He called petulantly, and demanded to be told where that doctor was. Some one answered that the doctor had been in while he slept. The room was darkened. He dimly perceived figures, -- Mr. Butterwell in the doorway, and women; two of them. He beckoned to his hostess, and tried to tell her that he was glad she had obtained assistance, and to beg her to hire all necessary nursing freely; but he was unable to express himself, and sank away again.

     The next time he became conscious, a clock somewhere was striking midnight. He felt the night air, and gratefully turned his mutilated, feverish face over towards it. A sick-lamp was burning low, in the entry, casting a little circle of light upon the old-fashioned, large-patterned oil-cloth. Only one person was in the room, a woman. He asked her for water. She brought it. She had a soft step. When he had satisfied his thirst, which he was allowed to do without protest, the woman gave him medicine. He recognized the familiar tumbler and teaspoon of his homœopathically educated infancy. He obeyed passively. The woman fed him with the medicine; she did not spill it, nor choke him; when she returned the teaspoon to the glass, he dimly saw the shape of her hand. He said,

     "You are not Mrs. Butterwell."

     "No."

     "You are my nurse?"

     "I take care of you to-night, sir."

     "I -- thank you," said Yorke, with a faint touch of his Beacon-Street courtliness; and so fell away again.

     He moved once more at dawn. He was alarmingly feverish. He heard the birds singing, and saw gray light through the slats of the closed green blinds. His agony had increased. He still moaned for water, and his mind reverted obstinately to its chief anxiety. He said,

     "Where is that doctor? I am too sick a man to be neglected. I must see the doctor."

     "The doctor has been here," said the woman who was serving as nurse, "nearly all night."

     "Ah! I have been unconscious, I know."

     "Yes. But you have been cared for. I hope that you will be able to compose yourself. I trust that you will feel no undue anxiety about your medical attendance. Everything shall be done, Mr. Yorke."

     "I like your voice," said the patient, with delirious frankness. "I haven't heard one like it since I left home. I wish I were at home! It is natural that I should feel some anxiety about this country physician. I want to know the worst. I shall feel better after I have seen him."

     "Perhaps you may," replied the nurse, after a slight hesitation. "I will go and see about it. Sleep if you can. I shall be back directly."

     This quieted him, and he slept once more. When he waked it was broadening, brightening, beautiful day. The nurse was standing behind him at the head of the bed, which was pushed out from the wall into the free air. She said: -

      "The doctor is here, Mr. Yorke, and will speak with you in a moment. The bandage on your head is to be changed first."

     "Oh, very well. That is right. I am glad you have come, sir." The patient sighed contentedly. He submitted to the painful operation without further comment or complaint. He felt how much he was hurt, and how utterly he was at the mercy of this unseen, unknown being, who stood in the mysterious dawn there, fighting for his fainting life.

     ... He handled one gently enough; firmly, too, -- not a tremor; it did seem a practiced touch.

     The color slowly struck and traversed the young man's ghastly face.

     "Is this the doctor?"

     "Be calm, sir, -- yes."

     "Is that the doctor's hand I feel upon my head at this moment?"

     "Be quiet, Mr. Yorke, - it is."

     "But this is a woman's hand!"

     "I cannot help it, sir. I would if I could, just this minute, rather than to disappoint you so."

     The startled color ebbed from the patient's face, dashing it white, leaving it gray. He looked very ill. He repeated faintly, --

     "A woman's hand!"

     "It is a good-sized hand, sir."

     "I -- Excuse me, madam."

     "It is a strong hand, Mr. Yorke. It does not tremble. Do you see?"

     "I see."

     "It is not a rough hand, I hope. It will not inflict more pain than it must."

     "I know."

     "It will inflict all that it ought. It is not afraid. It has handled serious injuries before. Yours is not the first."

     "What shall I do?" cried the sick man, with piteous bluntness.

     "I wish we could have avoided this shock and worry," replied the physician. She still stood, unseen and unsummoned, at the head of his bed. "I beg that you will not disturb yourself. There is another doctor in the village. I can put you in his hands at once, if you desire. Your uneasiness is very natural. I will fasten this bandage first, if you please."

     She finished her work in silence, with deft and gentle fingers.

     "Come round here," said the patient feebly. "I want to look at you."
 
 

III.

      She came at once. She stepped before him at the bedside, and stood there without moving. She let him look at her as long as he would. It was not long. He felt very ill. He regarded her confusedly. He perceived a woman of medium height, with a well-shaped head. He felt the dress and carriage of a lady. His eye fell upon her hands, which were crossed lightly on the edge of the little table where his medicines stood. Sick as he was, he noticed unusual signs of strength in her fingers, which were yet not deficient in delicacy. Yorke had always judged people a good deal by their hands. He repeated his nervous phrase:

     "I am in a woman's hands!"

     She spread them out before him with a swift, fine gesture; then made as if she put something unseen at one side from them.

     "Let me send for the man I spoke of. You are irresolute. You are losing strength and time. This is a mistake as well as a misfortune. I can't help being a woman, but I can help your suffering from the fact."

     "No, -- not yet. No. Wait a moment. I wish to speak with you. Will you pardon me if I ask -- a few questions?"

     "I will pardon anything. But they must be very few. I shall not stand by and see you spend your breath unnecessarily."

     "Are you an educated physician, madam?"

     "Yes, sir."

     "A beginner?"

     "I have practiced several years."

     "Do you think you understand my case?"

     "I think I do."

     "This old man you speak of, -- this other doctor, -- what is he?"

     His patients trust him."

     "Do you think I should trust him?"

     "No, sir."

     "Are you the only homœopathist in this region?"

     "There is one at Cherryfield; others at Bangor; none within thirty miles."

     "Can you get consultation?"

     "I have already telegraphed to Bangor for advice: there is an eminent surgeon there; he will come if needed. I know him well."

     "How much am I hurt?"

     "A good deal, sir."

      "Where are the injuries?"

     "In the head, the foot, and the right arm."

     "What are they?"

     "I do not wish you to talk of them. I do not wish you to talk any more of anything."

     "Just this, -- am I in danger?"

     "I hope not, Mr. Yorke."

     "I see you can tell the truth."[']

     "I am telling the truth."

     "I begin to trust you."

     She put her finger on her lip. He stirred heavily, with an ineffectual attempt to writhe himself into another position.

     "I cannot move. I did not know my arm was hurt before -- Ah, there!"

     As he spoke, blood sprang. The doctor made towards him a motion remarkable for its union of swiftness with great composure. Her face had a stern but perfectly steady light. She said calmly:

     "Lie still, Mr. Yorke," and with one hand held him down upon the pillow. He perceived then that a bandage had slipped from a deep wound just below the shoulder, and that a severed artery was oozing red and hot. He grew giddy and faint, but managed to keep his wits together to watch and see what the young woman would do. She quickly bared his arm, from which the sleeve was already cut away.

     "Mrs. Butterwell," she called quietly, "will you please bring me some hot water?"

     During the little delay which ensued on this order -- a momentary one, for Mrs. Isaiah Butterwell was one of those housekeepers who would prefer a lukewarm conscience to a lukewarm boiler -- the doctor gently unrolled the bandage from the wound, which she then thoroughly sponged and cleansed. The patient thought he heard her say something about "secondary hæmorrhage;" but the words, if indeed she used them at all, were not addressed to him. The hot water did not stop the blood, which seemed to him to be sucking his soul out.

     "Hold this arm, Mrs. Butterwell," said the young lady -- "just so. Keep it in this position till I tell you to let go. Do you understand? There. No, stay. Call Mr. Butterwell. I want two."

     She drew her surgical case from her pocket, and selected an artery forceps. She opened the wound, and instructed Mr. Butterwell how to hold the forceps in position while she ligated the artery. She bandaged the arm, and adjusted it to suit her upon a pillow. She had a firm and fearless touch. Her face betrayed no uneasiness; only the contraction of the brows inseparable from studious attention.

      The patient looked at the physician with glazing eyes.

     "Write to my mother," he said weakly.

     "Don't say you are not a man. Only say you are not an allopath -- and that I have given my case unreservedly to you. Tell her not to worry. Give her my love. Tell her" --

     And with this he fainted quite away.
 

     This faint was the prelude to a hard pull. Days of alternate syncope and delirium followed. Short intervals of consciousness found him quiet, but alarmingly weak. His early anxiety had ceased to manifest itself. He yielded to the treatment he received without criticism or demur. In fact, he was too ill to do anything else. This condition lasted for more than a week.

     One day he awoke, conscious and calm. It was a sunny day. There seemed to be a faint woody perfume in the room, from some source unknown. A long, narrow block of light lay yellow on the stiff-patterned brown carpet; it was by no means, however, a cheap carpet. There was an expensive red and gold paper on the walls, and marble-topped furniture. There were two pictures. One was a framed certificate setting forth the fact of Mr. Butterwell's honored and honorable career as a Freemason. The other was an engraving of the Sistine Madonna. Yorke had hardly noticed the contents of his room before. He observed these details with the vivid interest of a newly-made invalid, wondering how long he was likely to lie and look at them. As his eye wandered weakly about the room it rested upon the bureau, which stood somewhat behind him. A vase of yellow Austrian glass was on the bureau; it held a spray of apple-blossoms.

     While he lay breathing in their delicate outlines like a perfume, and feeling their perfume like a color, the half-opened door pushed gently in, and a woman -- a lady -- entered with a quick step. She was a young lady; or at least she was under thirty. She stopped on seeing that he was awake, and the two regarded each other. She saw a very haggard-looking young fellow, with a sane eye and a wan smile. He saw a blooming creature. She had her hat on and driving-gloves in her hand[.] Her face was sensitive with pleasure at the change in the patient. She advanced towards him heartily, holding out her hand. He said,

     "Are you the doctor?"

     "Yes, sir."

     "What is -- excuse me -- but, madam, I don't know your name."

      "My name is Lloyd. You are better to-day!"

     "Infinitely! Wait, please.... I have seen you before. Where have I seen you?"

     "Three times a day for a week, without counting the nights," said the young lady, with mischief in her voice. She had a pleasant voice. She spoke a little too quickly, perhaps. She stood beside his bed. She stood erect and strong. Her hair was dark, and she had rather large, dark blue eyes. He thought it was a fine, strong face; he did not know but it might be safe to call it beautiful. She wore a blue flannel dress.

     "I know!" he said suddenly. "You are the caryatid."

     "What, sir?"

     "You are the blue caryatid -- Never mind. I am not deranged again. Have I been very crazy?"

     "Sometimes," said the lady gravely. Her expression and manner had changed. She sat down beside him and opened her medicine-case, which she laid upon the table. He smiled when he saw the tiny vials. She either did not observe or did not return the smile. Her face had settled into an intent and studious form, like a hardening cast. He thought, She is not beautiful.

     She took out her note-book, and began to ask him a series of professional questions. She spoke with the distinct but rapid enunciation which he had noticed before. She wrote down his answers carefully. Many of her questions were more personal than he had expected; he was not used to what Mrs. Butterwell called "doctoring." This young lady required his age, his habits, family history, and other items not immediately connected in the patient's mind with a dislocated ankle.

     "Now your pulse, please," she said, when she had reached the end of her catechism. She took his wrist in a business-like way. The young man experienced a certain embarrassment. The physician gave evidence of none. She laid his hand down again, as if it had been a bottle or a bandage, told him that she was greatly gratified with his marked improvement, prepared his powders, and, drawing the little rubber clasp over her medicine-case, gave him to understand by her motion and manner that she considered the consultation at an end.

     "One powder in six tablespoonfuls of water; one tablespoonful every four hours," she said, rising. "Are you quite able to remember? Or I will speak to Mrs. Butterwell myself as I go out. She will be with you soon, and I have directed that some one shall be within call whenever you are left alone. You do not object to being alone somewhat?"

     "I like it."

     "I was sure of it. I prefer you to be alone as much as you can bear now. But you will not be neglected. I will see you again at night."

     "I should like to talk with you a little," stammered Yorke, hardly knowing what was the etiquette of this anomalous position. "Cannot you stay longer?"

     She looked at her watch, hesitated, and sat down again.

     "I can give you a few minutes. I have a busy day before me."

     "Did you write to my mother," began the patient, "and what has she answered?"

     "If you go on improving at this rate, you may read your letters to-morrow, Mr. Yorke."

     "Not to-day?"

     "No."

     "You are arbitrary, Miss -- Dr. Lloyd."

     She gave him a cool, keen look.

     "That is my business," she said.

     "What has been the matter with me?" persisted the young man. 41 What are my injuries? I wish to know."

     "A dislocation of the ankle; a severed artery in the arm; and concussion of the brain, -- besides the minor cuts attendant on such an accident as yours. Each of these is doing finely. You have now no cause for alarm. It was a beautiful dislocation!" added the physician, with enthusiasm.

     "Have I been dangerously ill?"

     Yes."

     "Have you had consultation?"

     "By telegraph every day, your worst days; by letter when I have thought you would feel easier to know that I had it."

     How soon shall I be about again?"

     "I cannot promise you anything at present. You are doing remarkably well. But you will have occasion for patience, sir."

     "I must have seemed very rude -- or -- distrustful of you, at the first."

     "On the contrary, Mr. Yorke, you have shown me every reasonable confidence, -- far more than I could have expected under the circumstances. I have appreciated it."

     That sensitiveness had come into her face again; she gave him a direct, full look; and he thought once more that she was a beautiful woman.

     "Believe," he said earnestly, "that I am grateful to you, madam."

      She smiled indulgently, bowed, and left him. He heard her quick step in the hall, and her voice speaking to Mrs. Butterwell; then he heard her chirrup to her pony, and the sound of wheels. She drove rapidly, and was soon gone.

     The day passed in the faint, sweet, hazy way that only the convalescent knows. No other creature ever gets behind that glamour. Returning life paces towards one so solemnly that the soul would keep upon its knees, were it not so weak; one dares not pray; one ventures only to see the frolic in the eyes of the advancing power, and dashes into joy as bees into rhythm, or as flowers into color. Waldo Yorke was very happy. He thought of his mother; his heart was full. He looked at the block of yellow light upon the carpet; at the apple-blossoms in the vase; at the patch of June sky that burned beyond that one open window. Life and light, he thought, are here.

     Mrs. Isaiah Butterwell, however, was there too. She was extremely kind. She entertained the young man with a graphic account of his accident and its consequences. Mr. Butterwell himself came in, for a moment, and briefly considered it (although the Bangor horse was killed) a lucky thing.

     "When he brought you home," observed the lady," I said, 'He's dead.' I must say I hoped you were, for I said to my husband, He'll be an idiot if he lives.' It always seems to me as if the Creator was thinking he hadn't made enough of 'em, after all, and was watching opportunities to increase the stock. But our doctor's been a match for him this time!" added Mrs. Isaiah, with a snap of her soft eyes.

     "Why, -- Sar-ah!" rebuked her husband, gently.

     "Well, she has!" insisted Sarah; "and I don't see the harm. He made her, too, I suppose, didn't he? I think he ought to be proud of her. I've no doubt he is, -- not the least in the world."

     "Why, Sarah!" repeated Mr. Butterwell. He had the air of being just as much surprised by these little conversational peculiarities in his consort as if he had not wintered and summered them for better and worse for forty years. This amused the invalid. He liked to hear them talk. He was so happy that day that Mrs. Isaiah seemed to him really very witty. He drew her out. She dwelt a good deal upon the doctor. She explained to him her difficulty in concealing the fact of the physician's sex from him those first few days.

     "I would not tell a fib for you, Mr. Yorke, even if you did die. And when you ran on so about seeing the doctor, I was hard up. I couldn't say 'she,' and I wouldn't say 'he,' for she wasn't a 'he,' now was she? Once I got stuck in the middle of a sentence; and Mr. Butterwell was here, and I said, 'Sh -- Isaiah! -- he; ' so I cut the word in two, don't you see? Only I spelled it with an extra h. But I'd rather sacrifice my spellin' than my conscience. And Isaiah asked me afterwards what I sh-shd him up for, when he hadn't opened his mouth. He didn't open it very often while you were sick, Mr. Yorke. But he spoke about your uncle, and was blue enough. I had to make up my mind to do the talking for two when I married Mr. Butterwell. What time did Doctor Zay say she should look in again, Mr. Yorke?"

     "Doctor Zay?" repeated the young gentleman blankly.

     "Oh, we call her Doctor Zay. You see there were two of them, she and the old man; and, as luck would, they must have the same name. I suppose he was ashamed of his, -- Adoniram; I don't blame him. At any rate, there's the sign,n'r. A. Lloyd.' And she has some kind of a heathen name herself; I never can pronounce it; so she takes ton'r. Z. A. Lloyd,' and that's how we come by it. Everybody calls her Doctor Za. But she spells it with a y herself. We love the sound of it," added Mrs. Butterwell gently. "So would you, if you'd been a woman Down East, and she the first one, of all you'd read about and needed, you'd ever seen."

     "But I'm not a woman," interrupted the patient, laughing. "I can't call her Doctor Zay. The young lady has done admirably by me; I'll admit that. How much I must have troubled her, to come here so often!"

     "I wouldn't waste your feelings, sir," observed Mrs. Butterwell, dryly. "Feelings are too rich cream to be skimmed for nothing. Doctor would have done her duty by you, anyhow; but it's been less of a sacrifice, considering she lives here."

     The subsiding expression of weariness on the sick man's face rose to one of interest. He repeated, "Lives here?" not without something like energy.

     "Yes, I've had her a year. She was starving at the Sherman Hotel, and I took her in. I used to go to school with some connections of hers, so I felt a kind of responsibility for her. And then I'm always glad of society, as I told you when I took you. I'm social in my nature. I suppose that's why Providence went out of his way to marry me to Mr. Butterwell. If my lot had been cast in Portland, or Bangor, I'm afraid I should have been frivolous, as I said to Doctor Zay, the first time I saw her, -- it was chilblains; I thought I could trust her; I didn't know her then, you see. Do you mean to say you didn't notice her sign? Then, if she'd got sick at the hotel they'd have said she was A WOMAN. I had the cause to consider," added Mrs. Butterwell, solemnly.

     The physician came again at night, as she had promised. She was later than usual. Yorke listened for her wheels, and got restless. It made him nervous when the country wagons rolled up and rumbled by. He had flushed with the end of the day, and was feverish and miserable. He attended to his sensations anxiously. He wished she would come. It was quite dark when the low wheels of the phaeton came smoothly and suddenly to a stop in the great back yard; he heard the doctor's voice speaking cheerily to her boy. "Handy," she called him. Handy took the horse; a light step passed the corner of the house, and vanished. "She must have gone on to the office door," thought Yorke. He found himself absorbed in a little uneasiness; he wondered if she would take her tea first.

     She did not. She came to him directly. Her things were off; her hair smoothly brushed; she stood beside him, her pleasant figure, in its house-dress, cut against the light that fell through the open door. She began at once: "There are patients in the office, -- I am late; I was detained by a troublesome case. I can give you five minutes now, or come back when they are gone. Let me see!" She went out and brought the lamp, scrutinized his face closely, sat down, and felt his pulse; she did not count it, but quickly laid his hand aside.

     "Please come by and by," urged the young man. Already he felt unaccountably better. "I can wait." She hesitated a moment, then said, "Very well," and left him. She was gone half an hour.

     "Have you had your supper?" asked Yorke, when she came back.

     "Oh, my supper is used to waiting," said Doctor Zay, cheerfully. "You have waited quite long enough, sir. Now, if you please, to business."

     The note-book, the pencil, the medicine-case, and the somewhat stolid, studious look presented themselves at once. Yorke felt half amused, half annoyed. He wanted to be talked to, as if she had been like other women. He thought it would do him more good than the aconite pellets which she prepared so confidingly. He was just enough better to begin to be homesick. He asked her if he might try to walk to-morrow. She promptly replied in the negative.

     "I must walk next week," urged the patient, setting a touch of his natural imperiousness against her own. She gave him one of her composed looks.

     "You will walk, Mr. Yorke, when I allow you," she said, courteously enough. She looked so graceful and gentle and womanly, sitting there beside him, that all the man in him rebelled at her authority. Their eyes met, and clashed.

     "When will that be?" he insisted, with a creditable effort at submission.

     "A dislocated ankle is not to be used in ten days," replied the doctor quietly. "It is going to take time."

     "How much time?"

     "That depends partly on yourself, partly on me, a little on" -

     "Providence?" interrupted Yorke.

     "Not at all. God made the ankle, you dislocated it, I set it; nature must heal it."

     "Mrs. Butterwell might have said that."

     "Is it possible," said the young lady, with a change of manner, "that I am growing to talk like Mrs. Butterwell?"

     This was the first personal accent which Yorke had caught in the doctor's voice. Thinking, perhaps, to pursue a faint advantage, which he vaguely felt would be of interest to him when he grew stronger and had nothing else to do but study this young woman, he proceeded irrelevantly: -

     "I did not know that you stayed here, till to-day. It has been fortunate for me. It will be more fortunate still, if you are going to keep me on this bed all summer. Our hostess has been talking of you. She gave you such a pretty name! I've forgotten exactly what it was."

     "We will move you to the lounge to-morrow," replied the doctor, rising. Yorke made no answer. He felt as if he were too sick a man to be snubbed. He found it more natural to think that his overthrown strength ought to have appealed to her chivalry, than to question if he had presumed upon the advantage which it gave him. In the subdued light of the sick-room all the values of his face were deepened; he looked whiter for its setting of black hair, and his eyes darker for the pallor through which they burned. But the doctor was not an artist. She observed, and said to herself, "That is a cinchona look."

     She moved the night-lamp, gave a few orders, herself adjusted his window and blinds, and, stepping lightly, left him. She did not go out-of-doors, but crossed the hall, and disappeared in her own part of the house. He heard, soon after, what he now knew to be the office-bell. It rang four or five times; and he heard the distant feet of patients on the graveled walk that led to her door. After this there was silence, and he thought, "They have let her alone to rest now." It had not occurred to him before that she could be tired. He was restless, and did not sleep easily, and waked often. Once, far on in the night he thought it must have been, a noise in the back yard roused him. It was Handy rolling out the basket phaeton. Yorke heard whispers and hushed footfalls, and then the brisk trot of the gray pony. There was a lantern on the phaeton, which went flashing by his window, and crossed his wall with bright bars like those of a golden prison. He wished the blinds were open. He thought, "Now they have called that poor girl out again!" He pictured the desolate Maine roads. A vision of the forest presented itself to him: the great throat of blackness; the outline of near things, wet leaves, twigs, fern-clumps, and fallen logs; patches of moss and lichens, green and gray; and the light from the lonely carriage streaming out; above it the solitary figure of the caryatid, courageous and erect. He hoped the boy went with her. He listened some time to hear her return, but she did not come.

     When he awoke again it was about seven o'clock. He was faint, and while he was ringing for his beef-tea, the phaeton came into the yard.

     "Put up the pony, Handy," he heard her say; "she is tired out. Give me Old Oak, to-day."

     Yorke listened, feeling the strength of a new sensation. Was it possible that this young woman had practice enough to keep two horses? He knew nothing of the natural history of doctresses. He had thought of them chiefly as a species of higher nurse, -- poor women, who wore unbecoming clothes, took the horse-cars, and probably dropped their "g's," or said, "Is that so?"

     It was later than usual, that morning, when Doctor Zay came round to him. It was another of those sentient, vivid June days, and the block of light on the brown carpet seemed to throb as she crossed it. The apple-blossoms on the bureau had begun to droop. She herself looked pale.

     "You are tired!" began the patient impulsively.

     "I have been up all night," said the doctor shortly. She sat down with the indefinable air which holds all personalities at arms-length, and went at once to work. She examined the wounded arm, she bathed and bandaged the injured foot; she had him moved to the lounge, with Mr. Butterwell's assistance. She was incommunicative as a beautiful and obedient machine. Yorke longed to ask what was the matter with her, but he did not dare. He felt sorry to see her look so worn; but he perceived that she did not require his sympathy. She looked more delicate for her weariness, which seemed to be subtly at odds with her professional manner. He would have liked to ask her a great many things, but her abstraction forbade him. He contented himself with the pathological ground upon which alone it was practicable to meet this exceptional young woman, and renewed his entreaties to be allowed to use his foot.

     "You do not trust me," she said suddenly, laying down the sponge with which she had been bathing his arm.

     "You wrong me, Doctor Lloyd. I think I have proved that I do."

     "That is true. You have," she said, softening. "Trust me a while longer, then. No. Stay. Put your foot down, if you want to. Gently -- slowly -- but put it down."

     He did so. A low outcry escaped him; he grew very pale.

     "Now put it back," said the doctor grimly. But with that she melted like frost, and shone; she hovered over him; all the tenderness of the healer suffused her reticent face.

     "I am sorry to let you hurt yourself, but you will feel better; you will obey me now. Is the pain still so sharp? Give me the foot." As if it had been her property, she took the aching ankle in her warm, strong, and delicate hands, and for a few moments rubbed it gently and gravely; the pain subsided under her touch.

     "What am I going to do?" cried Yorke, despairingly.

     "You are going to do admirably, Mr. Yorke, on invention for a while, on courage by and by. Your crutches will be here to-morrow night."

     Waldo Yorke looked at the young lady with a kind of loyal helplessness. He felt so subdued by his anomalous position that, had she said, "I have sent to Bangor for your work-basket," or, "to Omaha for your wife," he would scarcely have experienced surprise. He repeated, "My crutches?" in a vague, submissive tone.

     "I sent to Bangor for a pair of Whittemore crutches three days ago," replied the doctor quietly[.] "I should not want you to use them before to-morrow. The stage will bring them at five o'clock. If I should be out, do not meddle with them. No, on the whole, I had them addressed to myself. I wish to be present when you try them. One powder dry on the tongue, if you please, every four hours. Good-morning."

     "Don't go, please," pleaded the young man; "it is so lonely to be sick."

     An amused expression settled between her fine, level brows. She made no reply. He realized that he had said an absurd thing. He remembered into how many sick-rooms she must bring her bloom and bounteousness, and for the first time in his fortunate life he understood how corrosive is the need of the sick for the well. He remembered that he was but one of -- how many? dependent and complaining creatures, draining upon the life of a strong and busy woman. He let her go in silence. He turned his face over towards the back of the lounge; it was a black hair-cloth lounge. "I must look as if I were stretched on a bier, here," thought the young man irritably. All his youth and vigor revolted from the tedious convalescence, which it was clear this fatally wise young woman foresaw, but was too shrewd to discuss with him. He remembered, with a kind of awe, some invalid friends of his mother's. One lay on a bed in Chestnut Street for fifteen years. He recalled a man he met in the Tyrol once, who broke his knee-pan in a gymnasium, -- was crippled for life. Yorke had always found him a trifle tiresome. He wished he had been kinder to the fellow, who, he remembered, had rather a lonely look. Yorke was receiving that enlargement and enlightenment of the imagination which it is the privilege of endurance alone, of all forms of human assimilation, to bestow upon us. Experience may almost be called a faculty of the soul.

     He was interesting himself to the best of his brave ability in this commendable train of thought, when something white fluttered softly between his heroically dismal face and the pall of smooth hair-cloth to which he had limited his horizon. It was a letter, and was followed by another, and another, -- his mother's letters. The big, weak, tender fellow caught them, like a lover, to his lips -- they had taken him so suddenly -- before he became aware that they fell from a delicately-gloved hand suspended between him and Mrs. Butterwell's striped wall. He turned, as the doctor was hurrying away, quickly enough -- for he was growing stronger every hour -- to snatch from her face a kind of maternal gentleness, a beautiful look. She was brooding over him with this little pleasure; he felt how glad she was to give it. But instantly an equally beautiful merriment darted over the upper part of the doctor's face, deepening ray within ray through the blue circles of her eyes, like the spark in the aureola of ripples where a shell has struck the sea.

     "Another fit of the sulks to-day, if you dare!" she said, and, evanescent as an uncaptured fancy, she was gone.
 
 

IV.

     WALDO YORKE was right in foreseeing for himself a tedious recovery. Had he at that time known the full extent of the shock he had undergone, that beautiful submission to the inevitable which he flattered himself he was cultivating to an extent that might almost be called feminine, and assuredly was super-masculine, would have received an important check. To his perplexed inquiries about certain annoying symptoms in the head and spine, his medical adviser returned that finely-constituted reply which is the historic solace and resource of the profession, -- that he had received a nervous strain. This is a phrase which stands with a few others (notably among them "the tissues," "the mucous membrane," and "debility"), that science keeps on hand as a drop-curtain between herself and a confiding if expectant laity.

     The young man got upon his crutches in the course of the week, but kept his room. He discovered the measure of his feebleness by the measure of his effort. He wrote cheerfully to Boston about both. In fact, he found himself more cheerful than one would have expected to be, under his really unusual circumstances. He wrote that Mrs. Butterwell read to him, and asked for more books. He deprecated distinctly a modest maternal plan for proposing to the eminent Dr. Fullkoffer to travel from Boston to Sherman to consult with the local physician. He assured his mother that he had every reason to be satisfied with his treatment. He still, from motives of consideration, neglected to reply to her minute inquiries as to the nature of the practitioner.

     "My mother wants to know whether he is 'high' or 'low.' What does she mean?" he asked. "And are you a gentleman or a quack? And does he 'alternate,' -- what's that? And does he use 'attenuations,'-- do you? -- and something -- I forget what -- about what she calls 'triturations.' It seems to be a very important point. I was not to omit to answer it. Then there was a treatise on -- I think she called them 'aggravations.' Don't go just yet, Doctor Zay -- I beg your pardon! I get so used to it with Mrs. Butterwell."

     "Oh, never mind," she said, with her gentler manner; it was one of her easy days, and she had leisure to be kind.

     "I wish you would tell me," pleaded Yorke "if you don't mind, how you came to have such an uncommon supply of initials. I've never even heard your name."

     "Atalanta," said the doctor, looking up pleasantly from the powder-paper she was folding with mathematical precision. He always liked to see her fold powders; it brought all the little delicate motions of her firm hands into play.

     "Ah, the apple-blossom!" said Yorke impulsively. The powder-paper remained for an instant motionless in Doctor['s] Zay's hand; she turned her head slightly in the attitude of attention towards the hair-cloth sofa. He thought, "She meant to do it." Her eyes were bent. He thought for a moment he could see the mischief beneath the lids, and that she would ripple into frolic over his daring speech, like any other young lady. Nothing of the sort happened. The doctor's countenance presented a strictly scientific basis. "She dropped it by accident," said Yorke.

     He contented himself with observing that it was an unusual name.

     "I had a mother who liked the name," proceeded the doctor, leaning back in her chair, and looking over his head out of the window into the young June day. "When I was a baby she had this fancy for romantic names. She called me Zaidee, to begin with. Then she happened on this. She always said it was cruelty to infants to impose names on them about which they were never consulted, and I should have my choice of either. I dropped the first, till I came here to practice. Then I had to make some compromise with fate as regarded Dr. Adoniram. There was something absurd in seeing 'Atalanta' on a Down East doctor's shingle, -- I have known women do such things in that way! I had a classmate who took out her diploma in the name of Cubbie Smith, M. D.; and there was one who was let loose upon a defenseless public as Dr. Teasie Trial. So I had recourse to the discarded initial. My patients have made a pretty use of it. I rather like it, myself."

     She gave that ominous snap to the elastic on the well-worn green morocco medicine-case which had become philosophically associated in the invalid's mind with the cessation of a pleasure. She was going. He hurried to say, --

     "Do you object to telling me how you came to settle in this village? There are so many things I should like to ask. I never knew a lady physician before. The whole thing interests me. So it will my mother; she is familiar with such subjects. I believe she once consulted a doctress herself. I shall tell her about you when I get a little better; when it is too late to worry."

     "I will give you any facts about professional women that may interest you, certainly," replied the doctor, rising, "when I have time."

     "You never have time!" cried the patient.

     "Have I neglected you, Mr. Yorke?" she asked, coloring slightly; her color became her. She wore a black dress that day, of almost extravagantly fine cashmere; she was always well dressed. There was a carmine ribbon around her high, close collar of immaculate linen. The fastidious sick man wondered where this Down East doctress had her origin.

     "You have asked me all sorts of personal questions," he went on, with his masculine insistence. "You know all about me."

     "It is my business," said the doctor, coldly, "to know all about you."

     "In other words, it is none of mine to feel the faintest human curiosity in a scientific fact like yourself. You are candid, Doctor Lloyd."

     "And you are nervous, Mr. Yorke. Good-morning. I will send Mrs. Butterwell to read to you."

     He held her to her promise, however; and the next time she came he returned to the subject. It was her mood to be tolerant of him that afternoon; indeed, she was tolerant of everything. She had just brought a patient triumphantly through a mortal attack of erysipelas: she had been a good deal worn by the case for some time; now her cruel care had slipped radiantly from her young shoulders. He had never heard her talk so naturally, so much like other women. It seemed to him at the moment as if she were really communicative. Afterwards, he remembered how little she had said; and began to analyze the fine reserve upon which all her ease had been poised, like the pendulum of a golden clock upon its axis. She told him that she had been in active practice for four years; that she was originally a Bangor girl; that she came to Sherman for a complexity of reasons which might not interest him. She paused there, as if there were nothing more to be said.

     "But where did you get your medical education?" asked Yorke. "I don't even know where such things are to be had."

     "At New York, Zürich, and Vienna."

     "But why did you select this wilderness to bury yourself in?" he repeated, his surprise overcoming his civility. "You who had seen -- Is it possible you have been abroad?"

     She laughed outright at this, but did not otherwise comment upon it. A fine, good-natured scorn hovered over and seemed to be about to light upon her. He perceived at what a disadvantage he was showing himself; he might as well have said point-blank, "I thought you a crude, rural agitator." He felt his cheeks burn with the quick fever of illness, while she went on indulgently to say,--

     "I used to come here summers, once. I knew Mrs. Butterwell and some people here. I must make my blunders somewhere. And then I had learned how terrible is the need of a woman by women, in country towns. One does not forget such things, who ever understands them. There is refinement and suffering and waste of delicate life enough in these desolate places to fill a circle in the Inferno. You do not know!" she said, with rare impetuousness. "No one knows, Mr. Yorke, but the woman healer."

     "What led you to see it? How came you to want to see it?" he asked, reverently. "How came you to make such a sacrifice of yourself? -- such a young, bright life as yours! I cannot understand it."

     She did not answer him at once; and when he raised his eyes he perceived that her own swam with sudden tears. She held them back royally, commanded herself, and answered in a very low voice: -

     "It was owing to -- my mother. She had a painful illness. There were only we two. I took care of her through it all. She spent that last summer here in Sherman, -- it was cool here. She suffered so from the hot weather! My mother was greatly comforted, during a part of her illness, by the services of a woman doctor in Boston. There was one when we were in Paris, too, who helped her. I said, When she is gone, I will do as much for some one else's mother."

     Waldo Yorke was lying with his hands clasped behind his head, his thin face upturned towards her while she spoke. He did not say anything; but his sense of sympathy with this lonely woman vibrated through him to the last sick nerve. He had, for a moment, that vague consciousness of gaining an unexpected hold upon an unknown privilege, which is one of the keenest allurements and bitterest delusions of life. He dared not speak, lest he should startle her, -- lest he should touch the rainbow in a bubble. She saw his hand tremble; her manner changed at once.

     "And so I became a doctor," she said, with superficial cheerfulness. "Is there anything more you wanted to know?"

     "I want to know everything." said Yorke, in an undertone. She ignored this little slip, as she would a rise in his pulse after dinner, or a faint turn on a hot day.

     "If I knew what kind of information would interest you," -- she continued good-naturedly, "but I have had a very simple history. It is like that of many others in my profession. I really have nothing to tell. It came to me the more easily because I always had a taste for science; I found that out in my Sophomore year. And I inherited it besides."

     "Sophomore?" repeated Yorke vaguely.

     "I was a Vassar girl," said the doctor quietly.

     "I have seen educated women before, though you mightn't think it," returned Yorke, with humility. "My mother has them at the house, sometimes. I never saw one like you. I never noticed them very much."

     "You must have been too preoccupied, -- a young man in your arduous profession, Mr. Yorke. I can readily understand that you would have little leisure to study feminine types."

     "It is unfair to be sarcastic with a patient, Doctor Lloyd! I was going to say it was unmanly. I have never been busy in my life. You know it as well as I do."

      She scintillated for an instant with that charming merriment she had, but made no reply.

     "Instead of being successful, I have been rich." he said bitterly. "If I had had to work for a living, I might have been worth something. There is nothing in life so fatal as to be fortunate."

     "Ah," she said indifferently, "do you think so?"

     "Indeed I do."

     "Have you had that stinging pain in the right side of the head, Mr. Yorke?"

     "Yes."

     "And the dizziness you complained of?"

     "A good deal. How many years did you study, Doctor Lloyd? Did you never shrink, -- never want to give it up?"

     "It was hard sometimes in the foreign lecture-rooms, among the men. They were very courteous to me. I never had anything to complain of. But they could not make it easy. I never saw a woman rudely treated but once; that was her own fault. Then the dissecting-room was a trial to me, at first. It would have been easier if my mother had been living; if I could have gone home and talked to her. I was only twenty-one. But courage, like muscle, grows by exercise. No; I never wanted to turn back."

     "How many years did you study?"

     "Three years are necessary to a diploma from any reputable school. The fourth I spent abroad. But of course one always studies. That is one of the advantages of the Maine wilderness. If I had settled down among people I knew in a town, there would have been too many minor demands. It is never even a professional necessity, down here, to get into one's best clothes; and there's been but one wedding reception since I've been here. I went to that on my way to a scarlet-fever patient. I couldn't come afterwards, with the risk. I did waste a pair of gloves, but I went in my woolen dress, the one I meant to sacrifice to that case. I do miss the concerts," she added; but hastily collected herself, with the air of a woman who had been drawn to the verge of a grave moral imprudence.

     "Were you ever in Boston, -- to stay, I mean?" asked Yorke.

     "Oh, Yes."

     "I wish I had known it! I suppose it is unpardonable to ask where you were?"

     "Oh," she said pleasantly, "I used to stay with different people: [.] at the Shirleys' sometimes, and the Waynes'. I saw more of New York in my gay days; we had more relatives there, and I liked it better than Boston. I used to be at the Garratts', when I was a child. They were very kind to me, I remember, when I cried because I was homesick; they never noticed me at the time, but always gave me orange marmalade for luncheon after it. When I got home I used to feel unappreciated, because tears and marmalade did not retain the relation of cause and effect."

     "Is it possible," cried Yorke, "that you are the little girl from somewhere who used to come over to our house with Susy Garratt, once in a while, to blow soap-bubbles? You had two long braids of black hair, and blew bigger bubbles than I did. I hated you."

     "Very likely," said the doctor, laughing as she rose. "I don't remember it. I haven't been to the Garratts' for years. Or anywhere else, for that matter."

     "You have had better things to do than to blow our soap-bubbles."

     She nodded gravely.

     "How many times have you walked across the room to-day, Mr. Yorke?"

     "Oh, wait a minute. Don't go yet."

     "How many times, I ask, have you walked about the room?"

     "Oh, ten, I believe, -- yes, ten."

     "I hope to get you out-of-doors next week. Are you suffering from restlessness? Do you feel that rebellion you spoke of at the tediousness of the case? I wish I could hasten your convalescence."

     "I don't," said Yorke bluntly, "though I am rebellious enough."

     She swept upon him the full fine rebuke of her professional look. He returned it with a certain defiance. She was a woman. She should not thrust him aside like this.

     "I believe I shall give you Nux," observed the physician, after a silence which the patient had felt was fraught with a significance he could hardly believe she failed to perceive or share. He flushed painfully.

     "Doctor Lloyd," he demanded, "did you ever have a man for a patient before?"

     "Oh, yes," quietly. "I am treating a Mr. Bailey now, -- the erysipelas case I spoke of. His wife is a patient of mine; and Bob, the boy, and all the babies. They live about four miles out, beside the Black Forest."

     "Do you often have us?" persisted Yorke.

     "I do not desire it, -- no. It will sometimes happen. Most of my patients are women and children. That is as I prefer it."

      She was sweeping away. She had almost a society manner, like any other young lady. She spoke haughtily. She was evidently displeased. He had never seen her look so handsome. But he dashed on: -

     "Did you ever treat a young man, -- a fellow like me?"

     "Certainly not."

     "I never should have known but you had them every day, -- never."

     "And why should you?" she answered coolly. She left him without another word. He listened for her to call Handy; for the nervous steps of the pony; for the decreasing sound of the phaeton wheels, which had become so familiar and vital an event in the invalid's dull day. He knew that he had made himself successfully wretched until he should see her once more. He knew that he had followed to the verge of folly a pathological, and therefore delusive, track in that region which lay marked upon the map of his nature as "unexplored." He knew that he should lie and think of it, regret it, curse it, set his teeth against it, and do it again.

     "I must get well," said the young man aloud; as if that result awaited only the expressed intention on his part, and fate, like woman, needed nothing but the proper masculine handling. He got over on his crutches to the tall bureau, and looked into the old-fashioned gilt-framed glass. He saw a fierce-looking fellow, all black and white, -- a thundercloud in the eyes, symptoms of earthquake about the jaw, the fragility of mortal illness in the sunken cheeks. What kind of a man was that to command a woman's respect? He must be on a level in her mind with, say, a case of measles. What a pity he could not have had the whooping-cough, and done with it!

     It occurred to him that he would go out-of-doors. It struck him just then that he should go into a decline if he housed himself here like an old tabby any longer. He hunted up his hat, and rolled Mrs. Butterwell's somewhat accentuated red and black striped afghan anyhow about him, and hobbled to the front door. The day was damp and cheerless. It did not rain, but would have done so if it had dared. Yorke looked at the clouds grimly. "They are probably ordered by their physician not to go out," he thought. He got down upon the graveled walk, and stumped along towards the gate. He had never felt more guilty since, at the conscientious age of eleven, he kissed Susy Garratt without asking: As he stood there he caught sight suddenly of the doctor's phaeton.

      She was turning a distant corner, over by the post-office. He maintained his ground sullenly; at least he would not run from her. She did not see him, he was sure; she was driving very fast. He watched her till she was out of sight, and then returned at once to the house. Mrs. Butterwell, at the rear kitchen window, was making lemon pies, -- a conscientious, not to say religious, process. No one observed him. As he came up the walk he caught a glimpse of the doctor's sign, and wondered, with the idle curiosity of illness, what her part of the house might be like. He felt himself extremely faint, after his exertion, and sank exhausted on the hair-cloth sofa, beneath the blazing but generous afghan. He looked at the marble-topped bureau, the Madonna and the framed certificate, the red and gold striped walls, the brown carpet, where the block of sunshine was conspicuously absent. The clock was striking ten. He tried to read. Sparks of fire darted before his eyes, and his ears rang. There was no mail-stage till four o'clock. Doctor Zay might not make her evening call before eight or nine.

     "How dare men ridicule or neglect sick women?" thought Waldo Yorke.

     The day dragged piteously enough. He felt unusually ill. He asked Mrs. Butterwell to stay till she dilated before his eyes, and her head swelled and flashed fire like a jack-o'-lantern. He let her go, to call her back because her vacant chair undertook to rise and hop after her as she went. She read till he entreated her as an act of charity to stop, and talked till he begged her in self-defense to read.

     "I'm worried to death about Doctor," observed Mrs. Butterwell, by way of saying something cheerful. It was the sick man's habit to discourage his hostess in gossiping about the young lady; perversely, to-day, he let her run on; he had already that prevailing sense of having broken the ten commandments, which made the absence of an eleventh seem a philosophical lapse on the part of the Giver.

     "She will be worked half out of her wits," proceeded Mrs. Butterwell, with that exasperating serenity which ignorance of one another's mental processes gives to the most perceptive of us at times. "East Sherman has the scarlet fever. It's something about drains. There's no society in East Sherman; they're a miserable lot. Doctor will be up and down day and night, now, you'll see. She has no more consideration for herself than a seraphim. She'll be one, if she don't mind. The poorer they are, the more nobody else goes near 'em, the more they get of her. I've seen her go on like a lover to creatures you or I wouldn't touch with our winter gloves on -- hold 'em in her arms -- dirty babies; and once there was a woman at the poor-house -- but there! I won't go into that. You wouldn't sleep a wink to-night. She has such a spirit! You'd expect it if she wasn't smart. When a woman ain't good for anything else she falls back on her spirit! You don't look for it when she's got bigger fish to fry. But there! There's more woman to our doctor than to the rest of us, just as there's more brains. Seems to me as if there was love enough invested in her for half the world to live on the interest, and never know they hadn't touched the principal. If she didn't give so much, she'd be rich on her own account before now."

     "Give so much what, -- love?" asked Yorke, turning with the look and motion of momentarily arrested suffering.

     "Practice," said Mrs. Isaiah severely. "She will do it, for all anybody, when folks ain't able to pay. Why, Mr. Yorke, if Doctor got all that's owin' her shen' do a five-thousand-dollar practice every year of her life; as it is, she don't fall short of three. She's sent for all over the county."

     "Five thousand dollars!" echoed the sick man faintly. "That girl!" He had never earned five hundred in his life.

     "And that, I'd have you understand," pursued "that girl's" adorer, "is only because she shuts herself up down here with us, bless her! If she lived in New York, I've no doubt it would be TWENTY-FIVE, -- not the least in the world. What are you laughing at, Mr. Yorke? There is a woman out West that makes twenty."

     "I don't dispute that it might be seventy," groaned Yorke.

     "Not that there's the remotest need of it," proceeded Mrs. Butterwell loftily. "Doctor is quite independent of her practice."

     "I never had heard of that!" exclaimed Yorke savagely.

     "Well, she is, all the same. Her father was one of the rich men in Bangor, -- a doctor himself; she used to be round his laboratories, and so on, with him, when she was little. He died when she was fifteen. This girl is the only one left, and has it all. You don't suppose Providence didn't know what he was about when he planned out her life! He sets too much by her. He never'd let her go skinning round in medical schools, do your own washing and gesticulate skeletons or go out nursing, to make a few dollars."

      "It is a remarkable case," murmured Yorke. "And I must have been a remarkable donkey."

     "Oh, I wouldn't dispute that, sir," replied Mrs. Isaiah gently.

     "Why, Sarah!" objected Mr. Butterwell, whose prudent gray head appeared at the half-open door in season to receive the full force of this characteristic reply.

     "Well, I wouldn't. I never argue with sick folks. You want to know what she does it for, Mr. Yorke? I see you do. Well, I'll tell you. Don't you know there are women that can't get through this valley without men folks, in some shape or 'nother? If there ain't one round, they're as miserable as a peacock deprived of society that appreciates spread-feathers. You know the kind I mean: if it ain't a husband, it's a flirtation; if she can't flirt, she adores her minister. I always said I didn't blame 'em, ministers and doctors and all those privileges, for walkin' right on over women's necks. It isn't in human nature to take the trouble to step off the thing that's under foot. Now, then! There are women that love women, Mr. Yorke, care for 'em, grieve over 'em, worry about 'em, feel a fellow feeling and a kind of duty to 'em, and never forget they're one of 'em, misery and all, -- and nonsense too, may be, if they hadn't better bread to set; and they lift up their strong arms far above our heads, sir, like statues I've read of that lift up temples, and carry our burdens for love of us, God bless 'em! -- and I wouldn't think much of him if he didn't!"

     "Why, Sarah, Sarah!" said Mr. Butterwell. The sick man