e stout, elderly neighbor, "I wish you'd let me
know, Tom Peckett, fur my black mar has got a hitch in her shoulder I
can't understand, and I'd like him to look at her."

The storekeeper smiled at the pensive man, and the pensive man smiled
back at the storekeeper. "You needn't trouble yourself about that young
woman's husband," said Mr Peckett. "There'll be a horse doctor coming
along afore you know it, and he'll attend to that old mar of yourn
without chargin' you a cent."

CHAPTER XXI.

The second afternoon of Lawrence Croft's confinement in the little
building in Mrs Keswick's yard, passed drearily enough. The sky retained
its sombre covering of clouds, and the rain came down in a melancholy,
capricious way, as if it were tears shed by a child who was crying
because it was bad. The monotony of the slowly moving hours was broken
only by a very brief visit from the old lady, who was going somewhere in
the covered spring wagon, and who looked in, before she started, to see
if her patient wanted anything; and by the arrival of a bundle of old
novels sent by Mrs Null. These books Lawrence looked over with
indifferent interest, hoping to find one among them that was not a love
story, but he was disappointed. They were all based upon, and most of
them permeated with, the tender passion, and Lawrence was not in the
mood for reading about that sort of thing. A person afflicted with a
disease is not apt to find agreeable occupation in reading hospital
reports upon his particular ailment.

The novels were put aside, and although Lawrence felt that he had smoked
almost too much during that day, he was about to light another cigar,
when he heard a carriage drive into the yard. Turning to the window he
saw a barouche, evidently a hired one, drawn by a pair of horses, very
lean and bony, but with their heads reined up so high that they had an
appearance of considerable spirit, and driven by a colored man, sitting
upon a very elevated seat, with a jaunty air and a well-worn whip. The
carriage drove over the grass to the front of the house--there was no
roadway in the yard, the short, crisp, tough grass having long resisted
the occasional action of wheels and hoofs--and there stopping, a
gentleman, with a valise, got out. He paid the driver, who immediately
turned the vehicle about, and drove away. The gentleman put his foot
upon the bottom step as if he were about to ascend, and then, apparently
changing his mind, he pi