It often happens in Europe, especially in England, that the man and his wife are so nearly of a height as to leave very little sensible difference in their statures; but it is a rare occurrence in this country. In America, the female is usually delicate, and of a comparatively small frame, while the average height of man is something beyond that of the European standard. It was a little out of the common way, therefore, to meet with a couple so nearly of a size, as these remains would make Goodwin and his wife to have been. “These skeletons are very nearly of the same length,” resumed the doctor, after measuring them for the fifth time. “The man could not have been much, if any, taller than his wife.” “He was not,” answered a juror. “Old Peter Goodwin could not have been more than five feet five, and Dorothy was all of that, I should think. When they came to meeting together, they looked much of a muchness.” Now, there is nothing on which a prudent and regular physician is more cautious than in committing himself on unknown and uncertain ground. He has his theories, and his standard of opinions, usually well settled in his mind, and he is ever on the alert to protect and bolster them; seldom making any admission that may contravene either. He is apt to denounce the water cure, however surprising may have been its effects; and there is commonly but one of the “opathies” to which he is in the least disposed to defer, and that is the particular “opathy” on which he has moulded his practice. As for Dr. McBrain, he belonged strictly to the alapathic school, and might be termed almost an ultra in his adherence to its laws, while the number of the new schools that were springing up around him, taught him caution, as well as great prudence, in the expression of his opinions. Give him a patient, and he went to work boldly, and with the decision and nerve of a physician accustomed to practise in an exaggerated climate; but place him before the public, as a theoretical man, and he was timid and wary. His friend Dunscomb had observed this peculiarity, thirty years before the commencement of our tale, and had quite recently told him, “You are bold in the only thing in which I am timid, Ned, and that is in making up to the women. If Mrs. Updyke were a newfangled theory, now, instead of an old-fashioned widow, as she is, hang me if I think you would have ever had the spirit to propose.” This peculiarity of temperament, and, perhaps, we might add of character, rendered Dr. McBrain, now, very averse to saying, in the face of so much probability, and the statements of so many witnesses, that the mutilated and charred skeletons that lay on the court-house table were those of two females, and not those of a man and his wife. It was certainly possible he might be mistaken; for the conflagration had made sad work of these poor emblems of mortality; but science has a clear eye, and the doctor was a skilful and practised anatomist. In his own