ous and
interesting, but I am cautious about receiving any stories a hundred
years old, if they involve an improbability, as his stories about the
cure of the tarantula bite by music certainly do. I am disposed to wait
for future developments, bearing in mind, of course, the very singular
case you have unearthed. It wouldn't be very strange if our young
gentleman had to send for me before the season is over. He is out a good
deal before the dew is off the grass, which is rather risky in this
neighborhood as autumn comes on. I am somewhat curious, I confess, about
the young man, but I do not meddle where I am not asked for or wanted,
and I have found that eggs hatch just as well if you let them alone in
the nest as if you take them out and shake them every day. This is a
wonderfully interesting supposition of yours, and may prove to be
strictly in accordance with the facts. But I do not think we have all
the facts in this young man's case. If it were proved that he had an
aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen your case. His
'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a wide
ground, to account for his self-isolation,--and the color hypothesis
seems as plausible as any. But, my dear Miss Vincent, I think you had
better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in my keeping for a
while, rather than let it get abroad in a community like this, where so
many tongues are in active exercise. I will carefully study this paper,
if you will leave it with me, and we will talk the whole matter over. It
is a fair subject for speculation, only we must keep quiet about it."

This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a little.
She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would come for it the
next day, and went off to tell the result of this visit to her bosom
friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.

XV

DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.

The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young
lady. She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered the
secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village. It was
of no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited state. But he
felt it his duty to guard her against any possible results of
indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of the equality,
almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman
in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too little