I am a citizen, and a freeholder, and a graduate of two universities;
and I stand upon my rights! Beware of malice prepense, of chance-medley,
and of manslaughter. It is I--your amicus; a friend and inmate. I--Dr.
Obed Battius."

"Who?" demanded Esther, in a voice that nearly refused to convey her
words to the ears of the anxious listener beneath. "Did you say it was
not Asa?"

"Nay, I am neither Asa, nor Absalom, nor any of the Hebrew princes, but
Obed, the root and stock of them all. Have I not said, woman, that you
keep one in attendance who is entitled to a peaceable as well as
an honourable admission? Do you take me for an animal of the class
amphibia, and that I can play with my lungs as a blacksmith does with
his bellows?"

The naturalist might have expended his breath much longer, without
producing any desirable result, had Esther been his only auditor.
Disappointed and alarmed, the woman had already sought her pallet, and
was preparing, with a sort of desperate indifference, to compose herself
to sleep. Abner, the sentinel below, however, had been aroused from
an exceedingly equivocal situation by the outcry; and as he had
now regained sufficient consciousness to recognise the voice of the
physician, the latter was admitted with the least possible delay. Dr.
Battius bustled through the narrow entrance, with an air of singular
impatience, and was already beginning to mount the difficult ascent,
when catching a view of the porter, he paused, to observe with an air
that he intended should be impressively admonitory--

"Abner, there are dangerous symptoms of somnolency about thee! It
is sufficiently exhibited in the tendency to hiation, and may prove
dangerous not only to yourself, but to all thy father's family."

"You never made a greater mistake, Doctor," returned the youth, gaping
like an indolent lion; "I haven't a symptom, as you call it, about any
part of me; and as to father and the children, I reckon the small-pox
and the measles have been thoroughly through the breed these many months
ago."

Content with his brief admonition, the naturalist had surmounted half
the difficulties of the ascent before the deliberate Abner ended his
justification. On the summit, Obed fully expected to encounter Esther,
of whose linguacious powers he had too often been furnished with the
most sinister reproofs, and of which he stood in an awe too salutary to
covet a repetition of the attacks. The reader can foresee that