ke a stone out of a sling, narrowly
missed the coping of the wall, broke with his head the iron bar which
held some wire netting, and toppled back with a thud into the yard. Up
he bounded with the blood streaming down his face, and running into our
half-finished stables he seized a hatchet, and with a bellow of
rage rushed at the horse. I caught him by the coat and put on a
fourteen-stone drag, while the horse dealer (who was as white as a
cheese) ran off with his horse into the street. Cullingworth broke away
from my grip, and cursing incoherently, his face slobbered with blood,
and his hatchet waving over his head, he rushed out of the yard--the
most diabolical looking ruffian you can imagine. However, luckily for
the dealer, he had got a good start, and Cullingworth was persuaded to
come back and wash his face. We bound up his cut, and found him little
the worse, except in his temper. But for me he would most certainly have
paid seventy pounds for his insane outburst of rage against the animal.

I daresay you think it strange that I should write so much about this
fellow and so little about anybody else; but the fact is, that I
know nobody else, and that my whole circle is bounded by my patients,
Cullingworth and his wife. They visit nobody, and nobody visits them. My
living with them brings the same taboo from my brother doctors upon my
head, although I have never done anything unprofessional myself. Who
should I see in the street the other day but the McFarlanes, whom you
will remember at Linlithgow? I was foolish enough to propose to Maimie
McFarlane once, and she was sensible enough to refuse me. What I should
have done had she accepted me, I can't imagine; for that was three years
ago, and I have more ties and less prospect of marriage now than then.
Well, there's no use yearning for what you can't have, and there's no
other man living to whom I would speak about the matter at all; but life
is a deadly, lonely thing when a man has no one on his side but himself.
Why is it that I am sitting here in the moonlight writing to you,
except that I am craving for sympathy and fellowship? I get it from you,
too--as much as one friend ever got from another--and yet there are some
sides to my nature with which neither wife nor friend nor any one else
can share. If you cut your own path, you must expect to find yourself
alone upon it.

Heigh ho! it's nearly dawn, and I as wakeful as ever. It is chilly, and
I have draped a