I laughed in spite of myself. Mr. Johnson looked sulky. "Ain't that what they call it? I ain't no doctor." "Mr. Lessing happens to be a student of chemistry, not a medical student, so if anyone's been trying to get round you with bogy tales they're talking nonsense. I'm surprised at a man of your education, Mr. Johnson, listening to such absurdities!" "Then what does he shut himself up for, with a lamp you can see two miles off, unless he's up to suthin' he don't want folks to know?" "Probably because he doesn't want a pack of ignoramuses meddling with his affairs." "Well, that's what they say, and there's folks as believes it," he said sullenly. "An' as fur his walkin' in the woods, I ain't tellin' you anything but what's so. He was seen the same night as Jake Menning got killed goin' down Dutchman's Hill. It was Jakey's half-brother as seen him, an' Aaron ain't one to be tellin' lies. No, sir! An' if Doctor Lennox was here now he would tell you the same, for he was called out to see a sick child at the Bend that same night and it was him as found Jake Menning there the next mornin'." "Do you know you're saying things you might get into trouble over?" I asked sternly. "Oh, I ain't sayin' he had no hand in it," he returned promptly. "Everyone knows Jakey got killed through bein' too drunk to look whar he was goin'!" I pushed a quarter over to him. "Well, give me some stamps, Mr. Johnson. If you take my advice you won't pay quite so much attention to idle gossip." I drove home, thinking. Lennox, or someone, had been chattering; that was clear. How far I had no means at present of knowing, for I was not going to pursue any further conversation with Johnson, ready as he was. A doctor who gives himself to gossip is no better than an old hen. I felt a sharp contempt for Lennox that overrode whatever interest I might once have had for him. If he had got himself into any tangle down here he deserved it thoroughly. A light covered wagon, such as hucksters use, was outside the gate when I got back, and a man, who had evidently been bargaining with Mrs. Searle at the back door, came round and climbed into it. I had to pull the mare up to one side to give him room to drive off, and as I waited I happened to notice him rather closely, the more so as he gave me a civil but obvious scrutiny himself as he climbed over the wagon-wheel. He was a man of about forty, in a tightly buttoned coat of greasy black oilskin and a peaked cap, which might have belonged earlier in its career to a seafaring man, pulled down over his forehead. His face, with unpleasantly close-set eyes, was scarred by smallpox, and apart from the repugnance which this disfigurement always inspires more or less, I think I have seldom seen a countenance which impressed me more disagreeably. He was a man whom I would have ordered off my own premises anywhere at first sight, and I replied with a curt nod to his over-subservient greeting.