aments were impressible,
though there was no explaining it. But he himself never claimed any
such personal gift, and never attempted any of the exploits which some
thought were in his power if he chose to exercise his faculty in that
direction. This girl was, as it were, a child to him, for he had seen
her grow up from infancy, and had often held her on his knee in her
early years. The first thing he did was to get her a nurse, for he saw
that neither of the two women about her exercised a quieting influence
upon her nerves. So he got her old friend, Nurse Byloe, to come and take
care of her.

The old nurse looked calm enough at one or two of his first visits, but
the next morning her face showed that something had been going wrong.
"Well, what has been the trouble, Nurse?" the Doctor said, as soon as he
could get her out of the room.

"She's been attackted, Doctor, sence you been here, dreadful. It's them
high stirricks, Doctor, 'n' I never see 'em higher, nor more of 'em.
Laughin' as ef she would bust. Cryin' as ef she'd lost all her friends,
'n' was a follerin' their corpse to their graves. And spassums,--sech
spassums! And ketchin' at her throat, 'n' sayin' there was a great ball
a risin' into it from her stommick. One time she had a kind o' lockjaw
like. And one time she stretched herself out 'n' laid jest as stiff as
ef she was dead. And she says now that her head feels as ef a nail had
been driv' into it,--into the left temple, she says, and that's what
makes her look so distressed now."

The Doctor came once more to her bedside. He saw that her forehead
was contracted, and that she was evidently suffering from severe pain
somewhere.

"Where is your uneasiness, Myrtle?" he asked.

She moved her hand very slowly, and pressed it on her left temple.
He laid his hand upon the same spot, kept it there a moment, and then
removed it. She took it gently with her own, and placed it on her temple
again. As he sat watching her, he saw that her features were growing
easier, and in a short time her deep, even breathing showed that she was
asleep.

"It beats all," the old nurse said. "Why, she's been a complainin' ever
sence daylight, and she hain't slep' not a wink afore, sence twelve
o'clock las' night! It's j es' like them magnetizers,--I never heerd you
was one o' them kind, Dr. Hurlbut."

"I can't say how it is, Nurse,--I have heard people say my hand was
magnetic, but I never thought of its quieting her so quick