Dr. Hobhed, the principal physician at the Port, had been growing unpopular for several years. He was running after strange gods, and some believed that he was crazy. He had been experimenting for years in connection with a hobby which he called “The Chemical Theory,” which seemed to afford him more satisfaction than the practice of his profession, though he was regarded as a very skilful physician. As no man can serve two masters, Dr. Hobhed’s practice began to scatter. People sent to the Mills for the doctor there for a time; but now two or three young practitioners had set up at the Port, and the old doctor was permitted to pursue his studies without much interruption. Dr. Bilks was a free and easy man. He had an abundance of tact--more tact than professional knowledge. He knew human nature better than pathology and therapeutics; consequently he was more successful in obtaining patients than in healing them, though his knowledge and skill were fully up to the average standard. He was a popular man in the Port. He knew how to make acquaintances. If there was anything going on in the place, he was always present in the heat of the excitement. He had a fast horse attached to a new sulky, and every forenoon he was seen driving at a furious pace through the principal streets, as though the life of a patient depended wholly upon the speed of his horse. He commenced this strategy before he had been three days in the place, and had kept it up ever since. It looked like business. When Dr. Bilks went into company, he talked a great deal about his profession. He was inclined to gape, even in the very teeth of decency and good manners; but this gape was always the prelude to a narrative of the hardships and privations of the physician’s life. He had been up all night, attending to a desperate case, miles away, where the people were not known. Dr. Bilks was an ill-used man in his own estimation, and patients seemed to break their legs and arms, derange their stomachs, and disorder their livers, solely to punish him. But the new doctor was a growing man. Dr. Bilks had been seven months at the Port, and had made the acquaintance of every man of consequence in the town. Dick Birch and the smart physician were on the most intimate terms. The doctor was no quack or charlatan; he was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, regularly matriculated, and regularly graduated at the Jefferson Medical College in the city of Philadelphia. There were so few persons of liberal culture in the place, that Dick was glad to know him, and afforded all needful encouragement to the acquaintance. Dr. Bilks had been a frequent visitor at Pine Hill before the return of its owner, and, of course, Eugene did not suffer at all in the descriptions which Dick gave of him. That the lord of Pine Hill, on his return, should be a fast friend of the smart doctor, was already a settled fact.