While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for the fourth time held a large phial, marked _Sulph. de Quin._, up to the light, as though he were counting the grains, the young preacher was instituting an inquiry into his own religious state. Why did he shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit? He had braved much harder toil and greater danger. On Pottawottomie Creek he would have a senior colleague upon whom all administrative responsibilities would devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in comparison with the preceding. On inquiring of himself he found that there was no circuit that would be attractive to him in his present state of mind, except the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house. At first Kike Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his own motives, as other men do under like circumstances, gave himself much credit for his grateful attachment to the family. Surely gratitude is a generous quality, and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another denomination, taken him under his roof and given him professional attention free of charge? And Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for him as though he were a brother? What could be more commendable than that he should find himself loth to leave people who were so good? But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating himself. He had always dealt hardly with Kike Lumsden. He could not rest now in this subterfuge; he would not give himself credit that he did not deserve. So while the doctor walked to the window and senselessly examined the contents of one of his bottles marked "_Hydrarg._," Kike took another and closer look at his own mind and saw that the one person whose loss would be painful to him was not Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent wife, nor the admirable Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of whose spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to. The consciousness that he was in love came to him suddenly--a consciousness not without pleasure, but with a plentiful admixture of pain. Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic alertness, caught the expression of a new self-knowledge and of an anxious pain upon the forehead of Lumsden. Then the physician seemed all at once satisfied with his medicines. The bottle labelled "_Hydrarg._" and the "_Sulph. de Quin._" were now replaced in the saddle bags.