rown less and less agreeable to
Mr. Drake: she was to him so entirely his own that he had not the least
desire to find out any thing about her, to learn a single fact or hear a
single conjecture to remind him that she was not in every sense as well
as the best, his own daughter. He was therefore not a little annoyed at
the persistency of the doctor's questioning, but, being a courteous man,
and under endless obligation to him for the very child's sake as well as
his own, he combated disinclination, and with success, acquainting the
doctor with every point he knew concerning Amanda. Then first the doctor
grew capable of giving his attention to the minister himself; whose son
if he had been, he could hardly have shown him greater devotion. A whole
week passed before he would allow him to go home. Dorothy waited upon
him, and Amanda ran about the house. The doctor and she had been friends
from the first, and now, when he was at home, there was never any doubt
where Amanda was to be found.

The same day on which the Drakes left him, Faber started by the
night-train for London, and was absent three days.

Amanda was now perfectly well, but Mr. Drake continued poorly. Dorothy
was anxious to get him away from the river-side, and proposed putting
the workmen into the Old House at once. To this he readily consented,
but would not listen to her suggestion that in the meantime he should go
to some watering-place. He would be quite well in a day or two, and
there was no rest for him, he said, until the work so sadly bungled was
properly done. He did not believe his plans were defective, and could
not help doubting whether they had been faithfully carried out. But the
builder, a man of honest repute, protested also that he could not
account for the yielding of the wall, except he had had the mishap to
build over some deep drain, or old well, which was not likely, so close
to the river. He offered to put it up again at his own expense, when
perhaps they might discover the cause of the catastrophe.

Sundry opinions and more than one rumor were current among the
neighbors. At last they were mostly divided into two parties, the one
professing the conviction that the butcher, who was known to have some
grudge at the minister, had, under the testudo-shelter of his
slaughter-house, undermined the wall; the other indignantly asserting
that the absurdity had no foundation except in the evil thoughts of
churchmen toward dissenters, being in