.

"You can go back to Dr. Cullingworth, and tell him that I have as much
to do as I care for," said I. "If you spy upon me after this it will be
at your own risk."

He shuffled and coloured, but I walked on and saw him no more. There was
no one on earth who could have had a motive for wanting to know exactly
what I was doing except Cullingworth; and the man's silence was
enough in itself to prove that I was right. I have heard nothing of
Cullingworth since.

I had a letter from my uncle in the Artillery, Sir Alexander Munro,
shortly after my start, telling me that he had heard of my proceedings
from my mother, and that he hoped to learn of my success. He is, as I
think you know, an ardent Wesleyan, like all my father's people, and he
told me that the chief Wesleyan minister in the town was an old friend
of his own, that he had learned from him that there was no Wesleyan
doctor, and that, being of a Wesleyan stock myself, if I would present
the enclosed letter of introduction to the minister, I should certainly
find it very much to my advantage. I thought it over, Bertie, and
it seemed to me that it would be playing it rather low down to use a
religious organisation to my own advantage, when I condemned them in the
abstract. It was a sore temptation, but I destroyed the letter.

I had one or two pieces of luck in the way of accidental cases. One
(which was of immense importance to me) was that of a grocer named
Haywood, who fell down in a fit outside the floor of his shop. I was
passing on my way to see a poor labourer with typhoid. You may believe
that I saw my chance, bustled in, treated the man, conciliated the wife,
tickled the child, and gained over the whole household. He had these
attacks periodically, and made an arrangement with me by which I was to
deal with him, and we were to balance bills against each other. It was
a ghoulish compact, by which a fit to him meant butter and bacon to
me, while a spell of health for Haywood sent me back to dry bread and
saveloys. However, it enabled me to put by for the rent many a shilling
which must otherwise have gone in food. At last, however, the poor
fellow died, and there was our final settlement.

Two small accidents occurred near my door (it was a busy crossing),
and though I got little enough from either of them, I ran down to the
newspaper office on each occasion, and had the gratification of
seeing in the evening edition that "the driver, though much shaken,