see, the old chap was so very holy that he had no disciples and never went out into the world, and even his food was brought to an appointed place by his admirers, and left there for him to fetch. He knew about the fight in the Pass, but he couldn’t say whether any of the escort had escaped, or whether this place had been taken by surprise and everybody wiped out. You may imagine the state I was in, and the threats and prayers and promises I lavished upon the old man, until he was at his wits’ end to know what to do with me. He preached me a long sermon one day upon patience and resignation, pointing out, first, that I must not think he bore me ill-will--quite the contrary, since I had saved him from being hung for murder in a very hard-sworn case when I first came here; second, that if he departed from his usual custom so far as to go out and ask the news, suspicion would immediately be excited, and I should be done for; third, that it was not he that was keeping me there, but the wounds I had got, which prevented me from moving.” “I should think so!” cried Dr Tighe, unable to keep silence longer. “Ladies and gentlemen, the patient before you was as good as dead, ought by rights to be dead now, yet there he sits and talks. Will you think of it, Mrs North? This husband of yours has had a bullet actually through his heart. He’s a living miracle. The difference of the minutest fraction of an inch of space, the minutest fraction of a second of time, would have meant that you would be a widow at this moment. How it is you are not, I cannot explain--I tell you frankly. Though it may seem to the vulgar mind to reflect upon our common profession, I imagine that being let absolutely alone may have had something to do with it, but I can’t tell. Be thankful that you’ve got him back, and take good care of him in future.” “I will; I will, indeed,” said Georgia fervently, squeezing Dick’s hand. “I regard you with an evil eye, Major, I don’t deny it,” went on the doctor. “You’re a living falsification of every canon of surgery. You had no business to survive that wound, much less to live through the absence of treatment you met with. It’s a slap in Mrs North’s face, I call it, to say nothing of mine. But let us hear some more of your reprehensible proceedings.”