And both shine with a steady clear light upon the heavenward way?"

"There's no question of shining," said the doctor half scornfully, half
impatiently. "If they shew colour at all, it is on a way that is murky
enough, heaven knows!"

"Then what have they to do with the question?" said Mr. Linden,--"you
are applying rules of action which you would laugh at in any other
case. Does the multitude of quacks disgust you with the science of
medicine?--does the dim burning of a dozen poor candles hinder your
lighting a good one? You have nothing to do with other people's
lights,--let your own shine!"

Dr. Harrison stood looking at his adviser a minute, with a smile that
was both pleased and acute.

"Linden"--said he,--"it strikes me that you are out of your vocation."

"When I heard that account last night,"--Mr. Linden went on--and he
paused, as if the recollection were painful,--"the second thing I
thought of was your own words, that heaven is not in 'your line.'"

"Well?--" said the doctor swinging his hat and beginning to pace up and
down the room, and speaking as if at once confessing and justifying the
charge laid to him,--"Now and then, I believe, a bodily angel comes
down to the earth and leaves her wings behind her--but that's not
humanity, Linden!"

"True servant of God, is as fair a name as angel," said Mr. Linden;
"and that is what humanity may be and often is. 'Though crowns are
wanting, and bright pinions folded.'"

"I don't know--" said the doctor. "I shouldn't have wondered any minute
yesterday to see the pinions unfold before me." Which remark was
received in silence.

"If such an angel were to take hold of me," the doctor went on
meditatively,--"I believe she might make me and carry me whither she
would. But I wonder if I shall be forbid the house now!"--He stopped
and looked at Mr. Linden with a face of comic enquiry.

"You may come and see _me_," said Mr. Linden, with comforting assurance.

"Do you think I may?" said the doctor. He sat down and threw his hat on
the floor.--"What shall I do with Mrs. Derrick? She will want to send
me off in a balloon, on some air journey that will never land me on
earth!--or find some other vanishing medium most prompt and
irrevocable--all as a penalty for my having ventured to leap a fence in
company with her daughter!"

But the prudent fit had perhaps come back upon Mr. Linden, for except a
sudden illumination of eye and face, the doctor's speech called forth