g cows on
the one side of the road, and the nigh, weather-stained board fence
of the race-course on the other, completed the jumble of primitive
rusticity and urban complications characterizing the whole picture.

Dr. Ledsmar's house, toward which Theron's impulses had been secretly
leading him ever since Celia's parting remark about the rheumatism, was
of that spacious and satisfying order of old-fashioned houses which men
of leisure and means built for themselves while the early traditions of
a sparse and contented homogeneous population were still strong in the
Republic. There was a hospitable look about its wide veranda, its broad,
low bulk, and its big, double front door, which did not fit at all with
the sketch of a man-hating recluse that the doctor had drawn of himself.

Theron had prepared his mind for the effect of being admitted by a
Chinaman, and was taken somewhat aback when the door was opened by the
doctor himself. His reception was pleasant enough, almost cordial, but
the sense of awkwardness followed him into his host's inner room and
rested heavily upon his opening speech.

"I heard, quite by accident, that you were ill," he said, laying aside
his hat.

"It's nothing at all," replied Ledsmar. "Merely a stiff shoulder that I
wear from time to time in memory of my father. It ought to be quite gone
by nightfall. It was good of you to come, all the same. Sit down if you
can find a chair. As usual, we are littered up to our eyes here. That's
it--throw those things on the floor."

Mr. Ware carefully deposited an armful of pamphlets on the rug at his
feet, and sat down. Litter was indeed the word for what he saw about
him. Bookcases, chairs, tables, the corners of the floor, were all
buried deep under disorderly strata of papers, diagrams, and opened
books. One could hardly walk about without treading on them. The dust
which danced up into the bar of sunshine streaming in from the window,
as the doctor stepped across to another chair, gave Theron new ideas
about the value of Chinese servants.

"I must thank you, first of all, doctor," he began, "for your kindness
in coming when I was ill. 'I was sick, and ye visited me.'"

"You mustn't think of it that way," said Ledsmar; "your friend came for
me, and of course I went; and gladly too. There was nothing that I
could do, or that anybody could do. Very interesting man, that friend
of yours. And his wife, too--both quite out of the common. I don't know
wh