The doctor was early with his patient; if the case was not one of urgency, the sufferer was in a more elevated rank than usually fell to the chances of Dispensary practice. Then, it promised to be one of the nice chronic cases, in which tact and personal agreeability--the two great strongholds of Dr. Dill in his own estimation--were of far more importance than the materia medica. Now, if Dill's world was not a very big one, he knew it thoroughly. He was a chronicle of all the family incidents of the county, and could recount every disaster of every house for thirty miles round. When the sprain had, therefore, been duly examined, and all the pangs of the patient sufficiently condoled with to establish the physician as a man of feeling, Dill proceeded to his task as a man of the world. Conyers, however, abruptly stopped him, by saying, “Tell me how I'm to get out of this place; some other inn, I mean.” “You are not comfortable here, then?” asked Dill. “In one sense, perfectly so. I like the quietness, the delightful tranquillity, the scenery,--everything, in short, but one circumstance. I 'm afraid these worthy people--whoever they are--want to regard me as a guest. Now I don't know them,--never saw them,--don't care to see them. My Colonel has a liking for all this sort of thing. It has to his mind a character of adventure that amuses him. It would n't in the least amuse me, and so I want to get away.” “Yes,” repeated Dill, blandly, after him, “wants to get away; desires to change the air.” “Not at all,” broke in Conyers, peevishly; “no question of air whatever. I don't want to be on a visit. I want an inn. What is this place they tell me of up the river,--Inis--something?” “Inistioge. M'Cabe's house; the 'Spotted Duck;' very small, very poor, far from clean, besides.” “Is there nothing else? Can't you think of some other place? For I can't have my servant here, circumstanced as I am now.” The doctor paused to reply. The medical mind is eminently ready-witted, and Dill at a glance took in all the dangers of removing his patient. Should he transfer him to his own village, the visit which now had to be requited as a journey of three miles and upwards, would then be an affair of next door. Should he send him to Thomastown, it would be worse again, for then he would be within the precincts of a greater than Dill himself,--a practitioner who had a one-horse phaeton, and whose name was written on brass. “Would you dislike a comfortable lodging in a private family,--one of the first respectability, I may make bold to call it?” “Abhor it!--couldn't endure it! I'm not essentially troublesome or exacting, but I like to be able to be either, whenever the humor takes me.” “I was thinking of a house where you might freely take these liberties--”