moping ways, but he would soon be all right. If he could only get rid of that odd numbing pain in the left arm, he should soon be all right. Little Dr. Osborne was in the habit of retiring to rest at an early hour. In the old days, before his "girl" married, he liked to sit up and hear her warble away at her piano, letting himself be gradually lulled off to sleep by the music; and in later times, when his fireside was lonely and when he was not expecting any special work, he would frequently drive over to Woolgreaves, or to the Churchill's at the Park, and play a rubber. But since he had quarrelled with Mrs. Creswell, since her "most disrespectful treatment of him," as he phrased it, he had never crossed the threshold at Woolgreaves, and the people at the Park were away wintering in Italy, so that the little doctor generally finished his modest tumbler of grog at half-past ten and "turned in" soon after. He was a sound sleeper, his housekeeper was deaf, and the maid, who slept up in the roof, never heard anything, not even her own snoring, so that a late visitor had a bad chance of making his presence known. A few nights after the events just recorded, however, one of Mr. Creswell's grooms attached his horse to the doctor's railings and gave himself up to performing on the bell with such energy and determination, that after two minutes a window opened and the doctor's voice was heard demanding, "Who's there?" "Sam, from Woolgreaves, doctor, wi' a note." "From Woolgreaves!--a note! What's the matter?" "Squire's bad, had a fit, I heerd housekeeper say, and madam she have wrote this note for you! Come down, doctor; it's marked 'mediate, madam said. Do come down!" "Eh?--what--Woolgreaves--had a fit--Mrs. Creswell--I'm coming!" and the window was shut, and in a few minutes Sam was shivering in the hall, while the doctor read the note by the gaslight in his surgery. "Hum!--'No doubt you'll be surprised'--should think so, indeed--'has been long ill'--thought so when I saw him in the Corn Exchange on Saturday--'just now had some kind of frightful seizure'--poor dear old friend--'calls for you--insists on seeing you--for God's sake come'--dear me, dear me!" And the doctor wiped his honest old eyes on the back of his tattered old dressing-gown, and poured out a glass of brandy for Sam, and another for himself, and gave the groom the key of the stable, and bade him harness the pony, for he should be ready in five minutes. The house was all aroused, lights were gleaming in the windows, as the doctor drove up the avenue, and Marian was standing in the hall when he entered. She stepped forward to meet him, but there was something in the old man's look which stopped her from putting out her hand as she had intended, so they merely bowed gravely, and she led the way to her husband's room, where she left him.