Mr. Heath's condition excited the doctor's professional curiosity. It was an abstruse physiological problem, and spurred his zeal. By dint of patient investigation, and consultation with the family, he discovered the great interest Mr. Heath took in the pirate Klove. He questioned the groom and gardener in relation to the stranger who had been harbored by Mr. Heath, and by comparing their descriptions with others, came to the conclusion that the mysterious visitor and Klove were one and the same man. To satisfy himself clearly on that point and obtain a further clue to this singular affair, he proceeded to Freehold. Here he was not only confirmed in his conclusions, but learned, furthermore, that a gentleman, a stranger, answering closely to a description of Mr. Heath, had been noticed in attendance at the trial, and in frequent consultation with the prisoner's lawyer. There was no longer any doubt in the doctor's mind of the existence of some connection or intimacy between the pirate and the patrician, which the mere fact of the former's having once lived in Belton would scarcely account for. He was inclined to suspect a secret tie of kinship, had it not been clearly established at the trial that Klove was born in Germany, and brought to the United States in childhood by his parents. Still cudgelling his brains for a plausible theory to account for Mr. Heath's singular proceedings, he was at length forced to refer them to some phase of hypochondria. Mrs. Applegate was decidedly of the opinion, now, that her brother was going out of his mind. She had often heard of such cases, she informed Dr. Wattletop. Mr. Applegate had a friend who was taken so, though, to be sure, his trouble arose from the Millerite excitement, and fear of the world's coming to an end. "Of course Rufus has no dread of that kind or anything of the sort, but I do think and believe that it all grows out of his son's death, and nothing else." "Do you really think that he is so much affected by his son's death?" asked the doctor, with an incredulous expression. "I don't think he has been the same man since. To be sure he didn't take on so much at first, and didn't seem to realize it fully; but I believe he feels it more and more, and it is that that has made him so different from what he used to be. Poor Edna! dear me, she worries so about her father, and I'm very much afraid she'll fall sick if this continues. Her room is near his, and she says she hears him pacing the floor at all hours of the night." "Insomnia, eh?" "And he talks to himself so often; and then again, if you speak to him, or question him, he looks at you so vacantly without replying." Precursory sign of cerebral disease, thought the doctor. "It's dreadful--dreadful!" continued Mrs. Applegate. "I can't help but think sometimes that Rufus is losing his senses, and yet such a thing as insanity was never known in our family."