ouse of Dame Heyliger,
with unusual alacrity. He was full of a bright idea that had popped
into his head at the funeral, and over which he had chuckled as he
shovelled the earth into the grave of the doctor's disciple. It had
occurred to him, that, as the situation of the deceased was vacant at
the doctor's, it would be the very place for Dolph. The boy had parts,
and could pound a pestle and run an errand with any boy in the
town-and what more was wanted in a student?

The suggestion of the sage Peter was a vision of glory to the mother.
She already saw Dolph, in her mind's eye, with a cane at his nose, a
knocker at his door, and an M.D. at the end of his name--one of the
established dignitaries of the town.

The matter, once undertaken, was soon effected; the sexton had some
influence with the doctor, they having had much dealing together in
the way of their separate professions; and the very next morning he
called and conducted the urchin, clad in his Sunday clothes, to
undergo the inspection of Dr. Karl Lodovick Knipperhausen.

They found the doctor seated in an elbow-chair, in one corner of his
study, or laboratory, with a large volume, in German print, before
him. He was a short, fat man, with a dark, square face, rendered more
dark by a black velvet cap. He had a little, knobbed nose, not unlike
the ace of spades, with a pair of spectacles gleaming on each side of
his dusky countenance, like a couple of bow-windows.

Dolph felt struck with awe, on entering into the presence of this
learned man; and gazed about him with boyish wonder at the furniture
of this chamber of knowledge, which appeared to him almost as the den
of a magician. In the centre stood a claw-footed table, with pestle
and mortar, phials and gallipots, and a pair of small, burnished
scales. At one end was a heavy clothes-press, turned into a receptacle
for drugs and compounds; against which hung the doctor's hat and
cloak, and gold-headed cane, and on the top grinned a human skull.
Along the mantelpiece were glass vessels, in which were snakes and
lizards, and a human foetus preserved in spirits. A closet, the doors
of which were taken off, contained three whole shelves of books, and
some, too, of mighty folio dimensions--a collection, the like of which
Dolph had never before beheld. As, however, the library did not take
up the whole of the closet, the doctor's thrifty housekeeper had
occupied the rest with pots of pickles and preserves; and h