know. Now, for instance, has she heard of her husband?"

"She has, Doctor. How on earth came you to guess that?"

"A mere guess, though I have always thought it quite possible, as the
accounts of his death were very uncertain."

Tom then set to work, and told the Doctor all that we know. He looked
very grave. "This is far worse than I had thought," he said, and
remained thoughtful.

Mary awoke in a fever and delirious. They kept Charles as much from her
as possible, lest she should let drop some hint of the matter to the
boy; but even in her delirium she kept her secret well; and towards the
evening the Doctor, finding her quieter, saddled his horse, and rode
away ten miles to a township, where resided a drunken surgeon, one of
the greatest blackguards in the country.

The surgeon was at home. He was drunk, of course; he always was, but
hardly more so to-day than usual. So the Doctor hoped for success in
his object, which was to procure a certain drug which was neither in
the medicine-chest at the Buckleys' nor at Toonarbin; and putting on
his sweetest smile when the surgeon came to the door, he made a remark
about the beauty of the weather, to which the other very gruffly
responded.

"I come to beg a favour," said Doctor Mulhaus. "Can you let me have a
little--so and so?"

"See you d--d first," was the polite reply. "A man comes a matter of
fourteen thousand miles, makes a pretty little practice, and then gets
it cut into by a parcel of ignorant foreigners, whose own country is
too hot to hold them. And not content with this, they have the brass to
ask for the loan of a man's drugs. As I said before, I'll see you d--d
first, AND THEN I WON'T." And so saying, he slammed the door.

Doctor Mulhaus was beside himself with rage. For the first and last
time since I have known him he forgot his discretion, and instead of
going away quietly, and treating the man with contempt, he began
kicking at the door, calling the man a scoundrel, &c., and between the
intervals of kicking, roaring through the keyhole, "Bring out your
diploma; do you hear, you impostor?" and then fell to work kicking
again. "Bring out your forged diploma, will you, you villain?"

This soon attracted the idlers from the public-house: a couple of
sawyers, a shepherd or two, all tipsy, of course, except one of the
sawyers, who was drunk. The drunken sawyer at length made out to his
own complete satisfaction that Doctor Mulhaus' wife was in labour, a