Suddenly the doctor felt all his old dread of Maddy Clyde returning. Why should she worry herself into a sweat? What was there in that visit different from any other? Nothing, he said to himself, nothing; and yet he, too, had been more anxious about it than any he had ever paid. Depositing his hat and gloves upon the table, he followed Mrs. Markham up the stairs, vaguely conscious of wishing she would stay out of the room, and very conscious of feeling glad when just at Maddy’s door and opposite a little window, she espied the hens busily engaged in devouring the yeast cakes, with which she had taken so much pains, and which she had placed in the hot sun to dry. Finding that they paid no heed to her loud “shoo, shoos,” she started herself to drive them away, telling the doctor to go right in by himself. The perspiration was standing under Maddy’s hair by this time, and when the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops, while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get along better if he treated her just as he would Jessie, the doctor confronted her at once, and asked: “How is my little patient to-day?” A faint scream broke from Maddy’s lips, and she involuntarily raised her hands to thrust the stranger away. This black-eyed, black-haired, thick-set man was not Dr. Holbrook; he was taller, and more slight, while she had not been deceived in the dark, brown eyes, which, even while they seemed to be mocking her, had worn a strange fascination for the maiden of fourteen and a half. The doctor fancied her delirious again, and this reassured him at once. Dropping the bouquet upon the bed, he clasped one of her hands in his, and without the slightest idea that she comprehended him, said soothingly: “Poor child, are you afraid of me—the doctor,—Dr. Holbrook?” Maddy did not try to withdraw her hand, but, raising her eyes, swimming in tears, to his face, she stammered out: “What does it mean, and where is he—the one who—asked me—those dreadful questions? I thought that was Dr. Holbrook.” Here was a dilemma—something for which the doctor was not prepared, and with a feeling that he would not betray Guy, he said: “No; that was some one else—a friend of mine—but I was there in the back office. Don’t you remember me? Please don’t grow excited. Compose yourself, and I will explain all by and by. This is wrong. ’Twill never do,” and talking thus rapidly he wiped away the sweat, about which grandma had told him. Maddy was disappointed, and it took her some time to rally sufficiently to convince the doctor that she was not delirious, as he termed it; but composing herself at last, she answered all his questions, and then, as he saw her eyes wandering toward the bouquet, he suddenly remembered that it was not yet presented, and placing it in her hands he said: “You like flowers, I know, and these are for you. I——”