Mrs. Rusker, with the fateful bottle in the bosom of her dress, betook herself again to Mountain Farm. Her unfeigned interest in the patient, and the intimacy she had so long enjoyed with the whole family, made the house almost as free to her as was her own, and when she took possession of Julia in the capacity of nurse she was made welcome, and the poor girl’s other attendants hoped much from her ministration. Julia was undoubtedly very ill, so ill that even Samson Mountain forbore to force her to descend to the parlour in which Mr. Tom Raybould nervously awaited her coming, and where, on Samson’s return from his daughter’s chamber, the pair sat and drank their beer together in miserable silence, broken by spasmodic attempts at conversation regarding crops and politics. The doctor had been called in, and, knowing nothing of the grief which was the poor girl’s only ailment, had been too puzzled by the symptoms of her malady to be of any great service. She was feverish, excited, with a furred tongue and a hot skin. He had prescribed a mild tonic and departed. Mrs. Jenny, intent on the execution of her plan, gained solitary charge of her patient by telling Mrs. Mountain that her attendance on her daughter had already told upon her, and advising a few hours’ rest. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ Mrs. Mountain confessed. ‘Not a wink o’ sleep have I had iver since Samson came home last night. Nor him nayther, for the matter o’ that, though he tried to desave me by snorin’, whinever I spoke to him; an’ as for any sympathy--well, you know him aforetime, Jenny--I might as well talk to that theer poker.’ Then Jenny was fluent in condolence, and at last got the old lady out of the room. ‘When did you take your medicine last, my dear?’ she asked the patient ‘Ain’t it time as you had another drop?’ ‘It doesn’t do me any good,’ said the patient fretfully. She knew better herself what was wrong with her than anybody else could guess, and only longed passionately to be alone and free to think and cry over her lost love and broken hopes. ‘Why, my dear, you’ve on’y took one dose yit,’ said Machiavel. ‘You must give it time. I’ll pour you out another.’ Her back was towards the patient as she clattered about among the glasses on the table with a shaking hand. She poured out the wizard’s potion, the phial clinking against the edge of the glass like a castanet, and her heart beating so that she almost feared Julia would hear it The girl at first pettishly refused the draught, but Mrs. Jenny, in her guilty agitation, made short work of her objections, and poured it down her throat almost by main force. ‘Maids must do as their elders bid ‘em,’ she said, as she returned the glass to its place. ‘It doesn’t taste the same,’ moaned the patient ‘You’re like all th’ other sick folk I iver nursed. As fall o’ fancies as you can stick,’ said Mrs. Jenny. ‘Lie quiet, and try an’ go to sleep.’