Eugene was troubled, and felt that he himself, as well as the doctor, stood in a false position. He could not avoid the conclusion that it was his duty to expose the hypocrite, and it required all of Dick Birch’s logic and eloquence to keep him quiet. Mrs. Hungerford and Julia, in their gratitude to the skilful and devoted physician, would not have the doctor injured. They reasoned that, if exposed, he would lose all incentives to even an outwardly correct life; the simple facts, if proved, would ruin him, and cast loose upon the world all the evil propensities of his nature. Dick, as a lawyer, reasoned that the evidence was fatally deficient, and it would be demoralizing to the public conscience to exhibit a crime which could not be proved. Instead of sustaining the majesty of justice, the exposure would tend to bring it into contempt. A crime was to be alleged, but not proved. The culprit had been in the library where the globules were kept; he had protested when they were offered to Julia. He alone could have known that the pellets were poison, which satisfied the family of his guilt. But the doctor was a bitter enemy of homœopathy, and a jury would attribute his protest--the full force of which could only be appreciated by those who had seen his pale face and heard his earnest words--to his dislike of the system; and he was certain to escape. Eugene could not even say that, as a juryman, he should be willing to convict a man on the evidence that could be adduced. Once more the tempest was permitted to subside. Eugene and Dick bowed to the doctor, and the doctor bowed to Eugene and Dick, when they met. Julia, Mrs. Hungerford the elder, and Mrs. Hungerford the younger, were coldly polite to him; and each party was scrupulously careful not to injure the other in word or deed. They were at war, but a perpetual truce had been tacitly agreed upon. If Julia Hungerford had ever hesitated between her two devoted lovers, there was no longer any room for a doubt. The doctor had fallen, and had disappeared like a lost star from the firmament of her imagination, but Dick Birch had become a whole constellation of himself. The comparison in her mind between Dick and the doctor, always favorable to the former, had now become a contrast. One morning, a month after Dr. Lynch had made his last visit to Pine Hill, as Dick was coming up from the river, he met Julia near the brook. He was about to cross the bridge, which he had planned and built with the proprietor’s consent, when he discovered her. He came to a halt, and awaited her approach. The scene on the former occasion, when he had first spoken to her of his love, came vividly to his mind. Close by was the bench on which they had sat. “Met again,” said he. She stopped as she was about to step upon the bridge. She smiled and she blushed. The figure of speech used by Dick when they met before came to her mind. They were on opposite sides of the stream. “Why do you stop?” asked Dick.