emuneration. You are in my
friend's house, and he and I understand each other.' 'I never receive
such favours,' said I, 'as you have rendered me, without remunerating
them; therefore I shall expect your bill.' 'Oh! just as you please,'
said the surgeon; and, shaking me by the hand more warmly than he had
hitherto done, he took his leave.

On the evening of the next day, the last which I spent with my kind
entertainer, I sat at tea with him in a little summer-house in his
garden, partially shaded by the boughs of a large fig-tree. The surgeon
had shortly before paid me his farewell visit, and had brought me the
letter of introduction to his friend at Horncastle, and also his bill,
which I found anything but extravagant. After we had each respectively
drank the contents of two cups--and it may not be amiss here to inform
the reader that though I took cream with my tea, as I always do when I
can procure that addition, the old man, like most people bred up in the
country drank his without it--he thus addressed me: 'I am, as I told you
on the night of your accident, the son of a breeder of horses, a
respectable and honest man. When I was about twenty he died, leaving me,
his only child, a comfortable property, consisting of about two hundred
acres of land and some fifteen hundred pounds in money. My mother had
died about three years previously. I felt the death of my mother keenly,
but that of my father less than was my duty; indeed, truth compels me to
acknowledge that I scarcely regretted his death. The cause of this want
of proper filial feeling was the opposition which I had experienced from
him in an affair which deeply concerned me. I had formed an attachment
for a young female in the neighbourhood, who, though poor, was of highly
respectable birth, her father having been a curate of the Established
Church. She was, at the time of which I am speaking, an orphan, having
lost both her parents, and supported herself by keeping a small school.
My attachment was returned, and we had pledged our vows, but my father,
who could not reconcile himself to her lack of fortune, forbade our
marriage in the most positive terms. He was wrong, for she was a fortune
in herself--amiable and accomplished. Oh! I cannot tell you all she
was'--and here the old man drew his hand across his eyes. 'By the death
of my father, the only obstacle to our happiness appeared to be removed.
We agreed, therefore, that our marriage should t