eople are rich and ill."

"I suppose you wouldn't care to settle here in Bradfield?" asked
Cullingworth.

"Well, I cannot see much point in that. If I harmed you as a partner,
I might do so more as a rival. If I succeeded it might be at your
expense."

"Well," said he, "choose your town, and my offer still holds good."

We hunted out an atlas, and laid the map of England before us on the
table. Cities and villages lay beneath me as thick as freckles, and yet
there was nothing to lead me to choose one rather than another.

"I think it should be some place large enough to give you plenty of room
for expansion," said he.

"Not too near London," added Mrs. Cullingworth.

"And, above all, a place where I know nobody," said I. "I can rough it
by myself, but I can't keep up appearances before visitors."

"What do you say to Stockwell?" said Cullingworth, putting the amber of
his pipe upon a town within thirty miles of Bradfield.

I had hardly heard of the place, but I raised my glass. "Well, here's to
Stockwell!" I cried; "I shall go there to-morrow morning and prospect."
We all drank the toast (as you will do at Lowell when you read this);
and so it is arranged, and you may rely upon it that I shall give you a
full and particular account of the result.

X. CADOGAN TERRACE, BIRCHESPOOL, 21st May, 1882.

My dear old chap, things have been happening, and I must tell you all
about it. Sympathy is a strange thing; for though I never see you, the
mere fact that you over there in New England are keenly interested in
what I am doing and thinking, makes my own life in old England very much
more interesting to me. The thought of you is like a good staff in my
right hand.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased
to deserve the name. You remember that in my last I had received my
dismissal, and was on the eve of starting for the little country town
of Stockwell to see if there were any sign of a possible practice there.
Well, in the morning, before I came down to breakfast, I was putting one
or two things into a bag, when there came a timid knock at my door, and
there was Mrs. Cullingworth in her dressing-jacket, with her hair down
her back.

"Would you mind coming down and seeing James, Dr. Munro?" said she. "He
has been very strange all night, and I am afraid that he is ill."

Down I went, and found Cullingworth looking rather red in the face, and
a trifle wild about the eyes. H