"And when I had your own bottle finished, Doctor, an ould man that was passing by to the fair of Kinvarra told me that there was nothin' in the world so good for a stiff arm as goose's grease or crane's lard, rendered, rubbed in, and, says he, in a few days your arm will be as limber as limber. So I went to the keeper at Inchguile, and he shot a crane for me; but there wasn't so much lard in it as I thought there'd be, because it was just after rearing a chitch." "Well, we must try and get you a better one next time," said the Doctor, nodding farewell to his loquacious patient, one of those non-paying ones who look on a "dispensary ticket" as conveying an unlimited right of discourse on the one hand and attention on the other. But the Doctor was just now in a position of vantage, being seated on his car, on which he slowly jogged out of sight, leaving the victim of rheumatism who had stopped him still experimentally rubbing the joints of his arm. It was the first of June by the calendar, but the outward signs of the season were but slightly visible in that grey West Country, where stones lay as the chief crop in the fields and innumerable walls took the place of hedges, and a drizzling mist from the Atlantic hid all distant outlines. The Doctor had been all day face to face with such cheerless surroundings, and was on his way homewards. But presently he stopped at the entrance of a little "boreen," where a wrinkled, red-skirted dame was standing sentry, leaning on a stout blackthorn stick. "Is it me you're looking out for, Mrs. Capel?" he asked. "I hope Mary is no worse to-day." "She's the one way always," was the reply; "and it wasn't of you I was thinking, Doctor, but standing I was to watch that ruffian of a pig of Mr. Rourke's that had me grand cabbages eat last night, and me in Cloon buying a pound of madder to colour a petticoat. Ah, then, look at him now standing there by the wall watching me out of the corner of his eye!" and flourishing her stick the energetic old lady trotted off to the attack. "I may as well go in and see Mary," muttered the Doctor, tying the reins to an isolated gate-post, and walking up the narrow lane to the thatched cottage it led to. "God save all here," he said, putting his head in over the half-door. "God save you kindly," was the reply from an old man in corduroy knee-breeches and a tall hat, who sat smoking a short pipe in the deep chimney-corner, and watching with interest the assault of various hens and geese upon the heap of potato-skins remaining in a basket-lid which had done duty as a dinner-table. The Doctor passed through to a little room beyond, whitewashed and containing a large four-post bed. The invalid, a gentle, consumptive-looking girl, lay on the pillows and smiled a greeting to the Doctor.