hus indulging his diabolical musing, and
passing, in his creeping manner, along the street, the cry of females
was heard behind him.

"Ay, there he is, Our Lady be praised!--there is the most helpful man in
Perth," said one voice.

"They may speak of knights and kings for redressing wrongs, as they
call it; but give me worthy Master Dwining the potter carrier, cummers,"
replied another.

At the same moment, the leech was surrounded and taken hold of by the
speakers, good women of the Fair City.

"How now, what's the matter?" said Dwining, "whose cow has calved?"

"There is no calving in the case," said one of the women, "but a poor
fatherless wean dying; so come awa' wi' you, for our trust is constant
in you, as Bruce said to Donald of the Isles."

"Opiferque per orbem dicor," said Henbane Dwining. "What is the child
dying of?"

"The croup--the croup," screamed one of the gossips; "the innocent is
rouping like a corbie."

"Cynanche trachealis--that disease makes brief work. Show me the house
instantly," continued the mediciner, who was in the habit of exercising
his profession liberally, not withstanding his natural avarice, and
humanely, in spite of his natural malignity. As we can suspect him of no
better principle, his motive most probably may have been vanity and the
love of his art.

He would nevertheless have declined giving his attendance in the present
case had he known whither the kind gossips were conducting him, in time
sufficient to frame an apology. But, ere he guessed where he was going,
the leech was hurried into the house of the late Oliver Proudfute, from
which he heard the chant of the women as they swathed and dressed the
corpse of the umquhile bonnet maker for the ceremony of next morning, of
which chant the following verses may be received as a modern imitation:

Viewless essence, thin and bare,
Well nigh melted into air,
Still with fondness hovering near
The earthly form thou once didst wear,

Pause upon thy pinion's flight;
Be thy course to left or right,
Be thou doom'd to soar or sink,
Pause upon the awful brink.

To avenge the deed expelling
Thee untimely from thy dwelling,
Mystic force thou shalt retain
O'er the blood and o'er the brain.

When the form thou shalt espy
That darken'd on thy closing eye,
When the footstep thou shalt hear
That thrill'd upon thy dying ear,

Then strange sympa