incensed against the attorney who represented a portion of the later tax titles. This attorney, a new-comer in Gracias, was a tall, narrow-chested young man from Maine, who had hoped to obtain health and a modest livelihood in the little southern town; it was plain that he would obtain neither, if long opposed to Reginald Kirby. "Sir," said the Doctor, who had been especially exasperated by a tax title which stood in the name of a certain Increase Kittredge, described as a resident, "there is collusion in this evidently. There is no such person in Gracias-a-Dios, and I venture to say there is no such person in the State; it is some northern _freebooter_ who is acting through you. Kittredge," he repeated, putting on his spectacles to read the name again. "And Increase!" he added, throwing back his head and looking about the room, as if calling the very furniture to witness. "No southerner, high or low, sir, had ever such a name as that since the universe was created; it's Yankee, Yankee to the core, as--if you will kindly allow me to mention it--is your own also." The youthful attorney, whose name was Jeremiah Boise, sat looking at his pen-holder with a discouraged air; he was very young, and he admired the Doctor profoundly, which made it worse. "And I am surprised," continued the Doctor, changing his tone to one of simple gravity, "that you should be willing to lend yourself to these plots and jobs" (the Doctor brought out these two words with rich round utterance), "which must, of course, act more or less upon the nerves, you who are so far from robust, who have so evidently a tendency"--here the Doctor paused, surveying Jeremiah from head to foot--"a tendency to weakness of the breathing powers."