omebody else's to the west.
Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact middle of the
country that was left between these bounds, and that middle was Little
Hintock; so here I am....' But, Lord, there: poor young man!"

"Why?"

"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and although
there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round,
and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don't seem to get
many patients. And there's no society at all; and I'm pretty near
melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 'I should be quite if it
were not for my books, and my lab--laboratory, and what not. Grammer,
I was made for higher things.' And then he'd yawn and yawn again."

"Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he
clever?"

"Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken
man or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you
tell him nearly where 'tis; but these young men--they should live to my
time of life, and then they'd see how clever they were at
five-and-twenty! And yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says the
oddest of rozums. 'Ah, Grammer,' he said, at another time, 'let me
tell you that Everything is Nothing. There's only Me and not Me in the
whole world.' And he told me that no man's hands could help what they
did, any more than the hands of a clock....Yes, he's a man of strange
meditations, and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star."

"He will soon go away, no doubt."

"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer hesitated. At
last she went on: "Don't tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you
know a secret."

Grace gave the required promise.

"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet."

"Buying you!--how?"

"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead. One day when I was there
cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large organ
of brain,' he said. 'A woman's is usually four ounces less than a
man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!--after he'd
flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to have
me as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel
left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be
of any use to my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are welcome to my
services; so I said I'd think it over, and would most likely agree and
take the ten pounds. Now this i