t upon the good father a single glance, filled
With that ineffable disdain which men of science entertain against
interlopers. His own aid was instant and efficacious: he snatched the
child from the despairing mother, stripped its throat, and opened
a vein, which, as it bled freely, relieved the little patient
instantaneously. In a brief space every dangerous symptom disappeared,
and Dwining, having bound up the vein, replaced the infant in the arms
of the half distracted mother.

The poor woman's distress for her husband's loss, which had been
suspended during the extremity of the child's danger, now returned on
Magdalen with the force of an augmented torrent, which has borne down
the dam dike that for a while interrupted its waves.

"Oh, learned sir," she said, "you see a poor woman of her that you once
knew a richer. But the hands that restored this bairn to my arms must
not leave this house empty. Generous, kind Master Dwining, accept of
his beads; they are made of ebony and silver. He aye liked to have his
things as handsome as any gentleman, and liker he was in all his ways to
a gentleman than any one of his standing, and even so came of it."

With these words, in a mute passion of grief she pressed to her breast
and to her lips the chaplet of her deceased husband, and proceeded to
thrust it into Dwining's hands.

"Take it," she said, "for the love of one who loved you well. Ah, he
used ever to say, if ever man could be brought back from the brink of
the grave, it must be by Master Dwining's guidance. And his ain bairn
is brought back this blessed day, and he is lying there stark and stiff,
and kens naething of its health and sickness! Oh, woe is me, and walawa!
But take the beads, and think on his puir soul, as you put them through
your fingers, he will be freed from purgatory the sooner that good
people pray to assoilzie him."

"Take back your beads, cummer; I know no legerdemain, can do no
conjuring tricks," said the mediciner, who, more moved than perhaps his
rugged nature had anticipated, endeavoured to avoid receiving the ill
omened gift. But his last words gave offence to the churchman, whose
presence he had not recollected when he uttered them.

"How now, sir leech!" said the Dominican, "do you call prayers for the
dead juggling tricks? I know that Chaucer, the English maker, says of
you mediciners, that your study is but little on the Bible. Our mother,
the church, hath nodded of late, but her eyes