The law took its course. No eye could see the hand that worked the machinery. The time was counted almost to a day, as the result proved. The young man was arrested, and gave bonds. It became the theme of general conversation. I was interviewed. I was dumb--deaf--blind! Threats and bribes proved equally ineffectual to induce me to give an opinion, or a pledge not to appear in the coming trial at the next term of the Superior Court. To marry the poor, unfortunate girl was beneath the dignity of the seducer and family. They would pay their last farthing first, or the young man would sooner go to prison for the crime. His two sisters carried their heads higher than ever. The two sons threatened my life. But I kept on the even tenor of my way. The girl became a mother. "Next Tuesday court sits," whispered everybody, and nothing in town was discussed but the probabilities of the pending lawsuit. The lawsuit was nothing, the fine was nothing, which the justice might impose; even imprisonment was nothing in comparison to acknowledgment of an illegitimate child by the deacon's family, notwithstanding the child was not red-haired, but much resembled its reputed father, the deacon's son. There was no trial. The squire paid a sum of money to the idiotic old father of the beautiful young mother, and agreed, orally, to support the child, and the suit was withdrawn. But this virtually acknowledged the child, and the girl returned to her father's roof for shelter, and a place wherein to weep alone over her so-called fatherless child, and hide her shame (?) from the uncharitable world. The town became too cramped for the squire and his beautiful family. He sold out, but not before he had lost his rule there, and was hanged in effigy as being "too Secesh." The seducer married a frail beauty, who mourns a drunken, brutish husband. The other son became steady, and married a lovely girl--my first patient. The daughters never wedded. Too proud to marry a poor man, too poor and destitute of real beauty or accomplishments for a wealthy or refined man to desire to wed them, they became servants and lackeys. If I desire a lunch at a certain saloon, one of them awaits my order. No matter about the other unfortunate, unloved girl. The father is an imbecile invalid. God is my witness, my judge, I long ago buried my hard feelings against them; they have only my commiseration. [Illustration] XV. DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES. "Three faces wears the doctor; when first sought, An angel's and a god's, the cure half wrought; But, when, the cure complete, he seeks his fee, The d----l looks then less terrible than he." EURICUS CORDUS, 1530.