re
forcibly called in the deep-rutted villages lying along the unsalted
streams. All at once it grew silent just round the door, where it had
been loudest,--and the silence spread itself like a stain, till it hushed
everything but a few corner-duets. A dark, sad-looking, middle-aged
gentleman entered the parlor, with a young lady on his arm,--his
daughter, as it seemed, for she was not wholly unlike him in feature, and
of the same dark complexion.

"Dudley Venner," exclaimed a dozen people, in startled, but
half-suppressed tones.

"What can have brought Dudley out to-night?" said Jefferson Buck, a young
fellow, who had been interrupted in one of the corner-duets which he was
executing in concert with Miss Susy Pettingill.

"How do I know, Jeff?" was Miss Susy's answer. Then, after a
pause,--"Elsie made him come, I guess. Go ask Dr. Kittredge; he knows
all about 'em both, they say."

Dr. Kittredge, the leading physician of Rockland, was a shrewd old man,
who looked pretty keenly into his patients through his spectacles, and
pretty widely at men, women, and things in general over them.
Sixty-three years old,--just the year of the grand climacteric. A bald
crown, as every doctor should have. A consulting practitioner's mouth;
that is, movable round the corners while the case is under examination,
but both corners well drawn down and kept so when the final opinion is
made up. In fact, the Doctor was often sent for to act as "caounsel,"
all over the county, and beyond it. He kept three or four horses,
sometimes riding in the saddle, commonly driving in a sulky, pretty fast,
and looking straight before him, so that people got out of the way of
bowing to him as he passed on the road. There was some talk about his
not being so long-sighted as other folks, but his old patients laughed
and looked knowing when this was spoken of.

The Doctor knew a good many things besides how to drop tinctures and
shake out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to
understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for him. He knew what a
nervous woman is, and how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when
she is in that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough word is
like a blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers reverses all
her nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul of
Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B
flat, and other low, sad keys,