he had begged him to go down into
the country and place himself under his mother's care. On the last
occasion, the doctor had threatened him with all manner of pains and
penalties: with pains, as to his speedy departure from this world and
all its joys; and with penalties, in the shape of poverty if that
departure should by any chance be retarded. But these threats had
at the moment been in vain, and the doctor had compromised matters
by inducing Sir Louis to promise that he would go to Brighton. The
baronet, however, who was at length frightened by some renewed
attack, gave up his Brighton scheme, and, without any notice to the
doctor, hurried down to Boxall Hill.

Mary did not see him on the first day of his coming, but the doctor
did. He received such intimation of the visit as enabled him to be at
the house soon after the young man's arrival; and, knowing that his
assistance might be necessary, he rode over to Boxall Hill. It was
a dreadful task to him, this of making the same fruitless endeavour
for the son that he had made for the father, and in the same house.
But he was bound by every consideration to perform the task. He had
promised the father that he would do for the son all that was in his
power; and he had, moreover, the consciousness, that should Sir Louis
succeed in destroying himself, the next heir to all the property was
his own niece, Mary Thorne.

He found Sir Louis in a low, wretched, miserable state. Though he
was a drunkard as his father was, he was not at all such a drunkard
as was his father. The physical capacities of the men were very
different. The daily amount of alcohol which the father had consumed
would have burnt up the son in a week; whereas, though the son
was continually tipsy, what he swallowed would hardly have had an
injurious effect upon the father.

"You are all wrong, quite wrong," said Sir Louis, petulantly; "it
isn't that at all. I have taken nothing this week past--literally
nothing. I think it's the liver."

Dr Thorne wanted no one to tell him what was the matter with his
ward. It was his liver; his liver, and his head, and his stomach, and
his heart. Every organ in his body had been destroyed, or was in the
course of destruction. His father had killed himself with brandy;
the son, more elevated in his tastes, was doing the same thing with
curacoa, maraschino, and cherry-bounce.

"Sir Louis," said the doctor--he was obliged to be much more
punctilious with him than he