st been driven forth or exorcised, and that
these tears were at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature.
But now she was to be soothed, and not excited. After her tears she
slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.

Old Sophy met the Doctor at the door and told him all the circumstances
connected with the extraordinary attack from which Elsie had suffered.
It was the purple leaves, she said. She remembered that Dick once
brought home a branch of a tree with some of the same leaves on it, and
Elsie screamed and almost fainted then. She, Sophy, had asked her, after
she had got quiet, what it was in the leaves that made her feel so bad.
Elsie could n't tell her,--did n't like to speak about it,--shuddered
whenever Sophy mentioned it.

This did not sound so strangely to the old Doctor as it does to some who
listen to his narrative. He had known some curious examples of
antipathies, and remembered reading of others still more singular. He had
known those who could not bear the presence of a cat, and recollected the
story, often told, of a person's hiding one in a chest when one of these
sensitive individuals came into the room, so as not to disturb him; but
he presently began to sweat and turn pale, and cried out that there must
be a cat hid somewhere. He knew people who were poisoned by
strawberries, by honey, by different meats, many who could not endure
cheese,--some who could not bear the smell of roses. If he had known all
the stories in the old books, he would have found that some have swooned
and become as dead men at the smell of a rose,--that a stout soldier has
been known to turn and run at the sight or smell of rue,--that cassia and
even olive-oil have produced deadly faintings in certain.
individuals,--in short, that almost everything has seemed to be a poison
to somebody.

"Bring me that basket, Sophy," said the old Doctor, "if you can find it."

Sophy brought it to him,--for he had not yet entered Elsie's apartment.

"These purple leaves are from the white ash," he said. "You don't know
the notion that people commonly have about that tree, Sophy?"

"I know they say the Ugly Things never go where the white ash grows,"
Sophy answered. "Oh, Doctor dear, what I'm thinkin' of a'n't true, is
it?"

The Doctor smiled sadly, but did not answer. He went directly to Elsie's
room. Nobody would have known by his manner that he saw any special
change in his patient. He