Of course Mrs. Overshute had called in the best advice to be had from the whole of the great profession of medicine. The roughness of the Abernethy school was still in vogue with country doctors; as even now some of it may be found in a craft which ought to be gentle in proportion to its helplessness. With timid people this roughness goes a long way towards creating faith, and makes them try to get better for fear of being insulted about it. In London however this Centauric school of medicine had not thriven, when the rude Nessus could not heal himself. A soft and soothing and genial race of Æsculapians arose; the "vis medicatrix naturæ" was exalted and fed with calves' feet; and the hand of velvet and the tongue of silver commended and sweetened the pill of bread. At the head of this pleasing and amiable band (who seldom either killed or cured) was the famous Sir Anthony Thistledown. This was the great physician who had been invoked from London--to the strong disgust of Splinters, then the foremost light at Oxford--when Squire Oglander was seized with his very serious illness. And now Sir Anthony did his best, with the aid of the reconciled Splinters, to soothe away death from the weary couch of the last of the race of Overshute. "A pretty story I've aheerd in Oxford to-day; make me shamed, it doth," said Zacchary Cripps to his sister Etty, while he smoked his contemplative pipe by the fire of Stow logs, one cold and windy April evening. "What do you think they've abeen and doed?" "Who, and where, Zak? How can I tell?" Esther was busy, trimming three rashers, before she put them into the frying-pan. "I really do believe you expect me to know everybody that comes to your thoughts, quite as if it was my own mind." "Well, so you ought," said the Carrier. "The women nowadays are so sharp, no man can have his own mind to his self. But anyhow you ought to know that I mean up to poor Worship Overshute's. Ah, a fine young gentleman as ever lived. Seemeth to be no more than last night as he sat in that there chair and said the queerest thing as ever were said by a Justice of the county bench." "What do you mean, Zak? I never heard him say anything but was kind and proper, and a credit to him." "Might be proper, or might not. But anyhow 'twere impossible. Did a tell me, or did a not, he would try to go a-poaching? When folk begins to talk like that, 'tis a sign of the ill come over them. Ah's me, 'tis little he'll ever do of poaching, or shutting, or riding to hounds, or tasting again of my best bottle! Bad enough job it be about old Squire, but he be an old man in a way of speaking. Well, the Lord He knoweth best, and us be all in the hollow of His hand. But he were a fine young fellow, as fine a young fellow as ever I see; and not a bit of pride about un!" Sadly reflecting, the Carrier stopped his pipe with a twig from the fireplace, and gazed at the soot, because his eyes were bright.