In answer to the surgeon's questions, the farmer told him she wasn't what one could call heart sick; but there was no "sprowl" (energy) in her; and her bowels were never in a right state. The surgeon gave him medicine for his wife, and promised to see her shortly. A few days after, having to visit a patient who lived near the ailing farmer's wife, he called to see her also. The husband, who was in "great stroath, and all of a stroll," molly-caudling about the household work, told the doctor that his wife was still in bed, no better for the medicine that he could see, and showed him up stairs to her room, where he found a big fat woman, sleeping soundly; when awoke, she described her ailment just as her husband had stated, dwelling much on her bad appetite, the weakness she felt all over, and her having[287] no heart to do anything. The doctor noticed, all about the chamber, a number of bottles and tea-cups, with the remains of all sorts of cordials and caudles in them, which showed that she had been nursed to the surfeiting point. Having felt her pulse, examined her tongue, and gone through all the ceremonies usual on such occasions, he shook his head and left the room, followed by the husband, who, with a long face, begged that he might be told the worst. "Now don't 'e be afraid to tell me," said he, "for if there is no hopes I can bear to hear it; thank goodness I have done all in my power for her, poor dear, and have nothing on my mind to answer for." "Her best chance of being cured depends upon you, I think," said the doctor, with a serious face, "if you can make up your mind to undertake a difficult job." "Oh, do tell me what I shall do," replied the man, "and I will go through fire and water for her, the dear." "That's all very easy to say," rejoined the doctor, "but it will require all your strength and courage. If you have a wheelbarrow about the place, bring it in, put your wife into it, and trundle her out into the middle of the largest field or croft hereabouts, there leave her, and if she won't come in let her stay there until she's tired; there's no more amiss with your wife than there is with me, except laziness and a diseased fancy, that you have made worse by indulging her whims; you should have been out in the fields about your work, and have left her to do without her caudles till she rose and cooked them." We don't know how the farmer proceeded to execute the doctor's advice, but next market day he called in, thanked him for his hint, said his wife was then doing her work, and as well as ever she was in her life. "But you had better not venture to see her again soon," said he, "for I believe she would as lieve meet the Old One as you for a bit." Almost every day one may hear of similar cases which show the power of superstitious fears over weak minds. Midsummer Bonfires.