His fees were pretty much what the folk chose to give him, and he collected them once a year at Kildrummie fair. “Weel, doctor, what am a’ awin’ ye for the wife and bairn? Ye ‘ill need three notes for that nicht ye stayed in the hoose an’ a’ the vessits.” “Havers,” MacLure would answer, “prices are low, a’ ‘m hearin’; gie ‘s thirty shillin’s.” “No, a’ ‘ll no, or the wife ‘ill tak’ ma ears aff,” and it was settled for two pounds. Lord Kilspindie gave him a free house and fields, and one way or other, Drumsheugh told me the doctor might get in about one hundred and fifty pounds a year, out of which he had to pay his old housekeeper’s wages and a boy’s, and keep two horses, besides the cost of instruments and books, which he bought through a friend in Edinburgh with much judgment. There was only one man who ever complained of the doctor’s charges, and that was the new farmer of Milton, who was so good that he was above both churches, and held a meeting in his barn. (It was Milton the Glen supposed at first to be a Mormon, but I can’t go into that now.) He offered MacLure a pound less than he asked, and two tracts, whereupon MacLure expressed his opinion of Milton, both from a theological and social standpoint, with such vigour and frankness that an attentive audience of Drumtochty men could hardly contain themselves. Jamie Soutar was selling his pig at the time, and missed the meeting, but he hastened to condole with Milton, who was complaining everywhere of the doctor’s language. “Ye did richt tae resist him; it ‘ill maybe roose the Glen tae mak’ a stand; he fair hands them in bondage. “Thirty shillin’s for twal’ vessits, and him no mair than seeven mile awa’, an’ a’ ‘m telt there werena mair than four at nicht. “Ye ‘ill hae the sympathy o’ the Glen, for a’body kens yir as free wi’ yir siller as yir tracts. “Wes ‘t ‘Beware o’ Gude Warks’ ye offered him? Man, ye chose it weel, for he’s been colleckin’ sae mony thae forty years, a’ ‘m feared for him. “A’ ‘ve often thocht oor doctor’s little better than the Gude Samaritan, an’ the Pharisees didna think muckle o’ his chance aither in this warld or that which is tae come.” II THROUGH THE FLOOD Dr. MacLure did not lead a solemn procession from the sick-bed to the dining-room, and give his opinion from the hearth-rug with an air of wisdom bordering on the supernatural, because neither the Drumtochty houses nor his manners were on that large scale. He was accustomed to deliver himself in the yard, and to conclude his directions with one foot in the stirrup; but when he left the room where the life of Annie Mitchell was ebbing slowly away, our doctor said not one word, and at the sight of his face her husband’s heart was troubled. He was a dull man, Tammas, who could not read the meaning of a sign, and laboured under a perpetual disability of speech; but love was eyes to him that day, and a mouth.