Dr. Stobæus was a physician of renown, but not good company. He was one-eyed, sickly, lame in one foot, and a gloomy hypochondriac to boot. Being unable to get around to his patients, he always had one or two students to do the running for him and to learn as best they might, in doing it. Carl found a young German installed there as the doctor’s right hand. He also found a library full of books on botany, a veritable heaven for him. But the gate was shut against him; the doctor had the key, and he saw nothing in the country lad but a needy student of no account. Perhaps the Rector had passed the head-master’s letter along. However, love laughs at locksmiths, and Carl Linnæus was hopelessly in love with his flowers. He got on the right side of the German by helping him over some hard stiles in the _materia medica_. In return, his fellow student brought him books out of the library when the doctor had gone to bed, and Carl sat up studying the big tomes till early cockcrow. Before the house stirred, the books were back on their shelves, the door locked, and no one was the wiser. No one except the doctor’s old mother, whose room was across the yard. She did not sleep well, and all night she saw the window lighted in her neighbor’s room. She told the doctor that Carl Linnæus fell asleep with the candle burning every single night, and sometime he would upset it and they would all be burned in their beds. The doctor nodded grimly; he knew the young scamps. No doubt they both sat up playing cards till dawn; but he would teach them. And the very next morning, at two o’clock, up he stumped on his lame foot to Carl’s room, in which there was light, sure enough, and went in without knocking. Carl was so deep in his work that he did not hear him at all, and the doctor stole up unperceived and looked over his shoulder. There lay his precious books, which he thought safely locked in the library, spread out before him, and his pupil was taking notes and copying drawings as if his life depended upon it. He gave a great start when Dr. Stobæus demanded what he was doing, but owned up frankly, while the doctor frowned and turned over his notes, leaf by leaf. “Go to bed and sleep like other people,” he said gruffly, yet kindly, when he had heard it all, “and hereafter study in the daytime;” and he not only gave him a key to his library, but took him to his own table after that. Up till then Carl had merely been a lodger in the house.