for doctors from the day when the first one grew too lazy to walk,--but a light, sporting-looking buggy, seated for one, and suggesting fast driving quite as much as the high-blooded, thorough-bred bay that champed his bit before it and stamped impatiently for the coming of his master. From the medical character of the visitor and the disabled appearance of the man in the easy-chair, it might have been concluded that the call was a professional one; and such was indeed the fact. An injury to the right limb of Robert Brand, received many years before, had a habit of asserting itself at uncertain periods, crippling him materially all the while, and at those particular times throwing him into all those agonies indifferently known as the pangs of neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. At such periods, the traditional character of the "gouty old Admiral" of the English stage, always limping and thumping a heavy cane, and nearly always venting words more forcible than polite, was very nearly illustrated in the old gentleman, his desire for active motion being generally in an inverse ratio to the power of movement. Dr. Pomeroy, one of the most skilful of the physicians of the section, and a man in very extensive practice, was always his medical adviser at such times, and re-directed the application of those warm flannels and neutralizing embrocations which constituted all that even science could do for the alleviation of his sufferings, and about which old Elspeth the housekeeper knew a good deal more, all the while, than any physician could possibly do. For the three days previous, Robert Brand had been suffering to a most painful degree, and this was the third of the daily visits of the doctor. But whatever might have been the professional character of the visit, it had, before the moment when our attention is called to the two interlocutors, lost any feature which could have marked it as such. Robert Brand was a patriot, almost equally warm-hearted and hot-headed in the type of his attachment to his country; while Dr. Pomeroy was one of those quasi-loyalists, popularly called "Copperheads," who have the love of country quite as often on their lips as the most unshrinking war-advocate can do, but who prefer to show that love by objecting to every effort made for the preservation of nationality, by denouncing, in every nine words out of ten, something done by the loyal government, while only the poor tenth is kept for a wail over the unfortunate character of the "civil war,"--and by undervaluing every success won by the Union arms, while every momentary advantage gained by the rebels is correspondingly magnified. He seemed to take particular delight, always, in tormenting the old gentleman just to the verge of a positive rupture without quite causing one; and just now, in the advance of the rebel forces into Pennsylvania, he found a golden opportunity.