The next scene of our story is in the Thorn Hotel at the prosperous manufacturing town of Sootythorn, a place superior to Shayton in size and civilization and selected by the authorities as the headquarters Of Colonel Stanburne's regiment of militia. Dr. Bardly arrived at the Thorn the morning after Isaac Ogden's relapse, having driven all the way from Shayton, through scenery which would have been comparable to any thing in England, if the valleys had not been spoiled by cotton-mills, rows of ugly cottages, and dismal-looking coal-pits. "Colonel Stanburne's expecting you, Doctor," said Mr. Garley, the landlord of the Thorn: "he's in the front sitting-room." The Colonel was sitting by himself, with the 'Times' and a little black pipe. "Good morning, Dr. Bardly! you've a nice little piece of work before you. There are a lot of fellows here to be examined as to their physical constitution--fellows, you know, who aspire to the honor of serving in the twentieth regiment of Royal Lancashire Militia." "Perhaps I'd better begin with the hofficers," said the Doctor. The Colonel looked alarmed, or affected to be so. "My dear Doctor, there's not the least necessity for examining officers--it isn't customary, it isn't legal; officers are always perfect, both physically and morally." A theory of this kind came well enough from Colonel Stanburne. He was six feet high, and the picture of health. He brought forth the fruits of good living, not, as Mr. Garley did, in a bloated and rubicund face and protuberant corporation, but in that admirable balance of the whole human organism which proves the regular and equal performance of all its functions. Dr. Bardly was a good judge of a man, and he had the same pleasure in looking at the Colonel that a fox-hunter feels in contemplating a fine horse. Beyond this, he liked Colonel Stanburne's society, not precisely, perhaps, for intellectual reasons--for, intellectually, there was little or nothing in common between the two men--but because he found in it a sort of mental refreshment, very pleasant to him after the society at Shayton. The Colonel was a different being--he lived in a different world from the world of the Ogdens and their friends; and it amused and interested the Doctor to see how this strange and rather admirable creature would conduct itself under the conditions of its present existence. The Doctor, as the reader must already feel perfectly assured, had not the weakness of snobbishness or parasitism in any form whatever; and if he liked to go to Wenderholme with the Colonel, it was not because there was an earl's daughter there, and the sacred odor of aristocracy about the place, but rather because he had a genuine pleasure in the society of his friend, whether amongst the splendors of Wenderholme, or in the parlor of the inn at Sootythorn.