r free."

The Doctor changed color as he listened, and the moisture broke out on
his forehead.

Master Gridley saw it, and followed up his advantage. "Dr. Fordyce
Hurlbut, are you not in danger of violating the sanctities of your
honorable calling, and leading astray a young person committed to your
sacred keeping?"

While saying these words, Master Gridley looked full upon him, with a
face so charged with grave meaning, so impressed with the gravity of his
warning accents, that the Doctor felt as if he were before some dread
tribunal, and remained silent. He was a member of the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
church, and the words he had just listened to were those of a sinful old
heathen who had never heard a sermon in his life; but they stung him, for
all that, as the parable of the prophet stung the royal transgressor.

He spoke at length, for the plain honest words had touched the right
spring of consciousness at the right moment; not too early, for he now
saw whither he was tending,--not too late, for he was not yet in the
inner spirals of the passion which whirls men and women to their doom in
ever-narrowing coils, that will not unwind at the command of God or man.

He spoke as one who is humbled by self-accusation, yet in a manly way, as
became his honorable and truthful character.

"Master Gridley," he said, "I stand convicted before you. I know too
well what you are thinking of. It is true, I cannot continue my
attendance on Myrtle--on Miss Hazard, for you mean her--without peril to
both of us. She is not herself. God forbid that I should cease to be
myself! I have been thinking of a summer tour, and I will at once set
out upon it, and leave this patient in my father's hands. I think he
will find strength to visit her under the circumstances."

The Doctor went off the next morning without saying a word to Myrtle
Hazard, and his father made the customary visit in his place.

That night the spirit tare her, as may well be supposed, and so the
second night. But there was no help for it: her doctor was gone, and the
old physician, with great effort, came instead, sat by her, spoke kindly
to her, left wise directions to her attendants, and above all assured
them that, if they would have a little patience, they would see all this
storm blow over.

On the third night after his visit, the spirit rent her sore, and came
out of her, or, in the phrase of to-day, she had a fierce paroxysm, after
which the violence of