oung Doctor had become ironical
and mocking; and though he had been mocked much in his day, there were
times when it was not easy to endure it.

The truth is the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature,
and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant,
because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the
little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During
the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had been far
from silent, for he joked at his own suffering and kept the housekeeper
laughing at his whimsical remarks; while he won her heart by the
extraordinary cleanliness of his threadbare clothes, and the perfect
order of his scantily-furnished knapsack. It had the exactness of one
who was set upon a far course and would carry it out on scientific
calculation. He had been full of mocking quips and sallies at himself,
but from first to last he never talked. The things he said were nothing
more than surface sounds, as it were--the ejaculations of a mind, not
its language or its meanings.

"He's had some strange history, this queer little man," said the
housekeeper to the Young Doctor; "and I'd like to know what it is. Why,
we don't even know his name."

"So would I," rejoined the Young Doctor, "and I'll have a good try for
it."

He had had his try more than once, but it had not succeeded. Perhaps a
little torture would do it, he thought; and so he had made the rather
tactless remark about the scarcity of dollars. Also his look was
incredulous when Jean Jacques protested that he had enough to pay the
fee.

"When you searched me you forgot to look in the right place," continued
Jean Jacques; and he drew from the lining of the hat he held in his hand
a little bundle of ten-dollar bills. "Here--take your pay from them," he
said, and held out the roll of bills. "I suppose it won't be more than
four dollars a day; and there's enough, I think. I can't pay you for
your kindness to me, and I don't want to. I'd like to owe you that; and
it's a good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness. He remembers
it when he gets older. It helps him to forgive himself more or less for
what he's sorry for in life. I've enough in this bunch to pay for board
and professional attendance, or else the price has gone up since I had a
doctor before."

He laughed now, and the laugh was half-ironical, half-protesting. It
seemed to come from the well of a hi