ad learned enough to justify me in
treating them as flagrant cheats, and himself as their egregious dupe.

Low Town soon ranged itself, with very few exceptions, on my side. The
Hill at first seemed disposed to rally round its insulted physician, and
to make the dispute a party question, in which the Hill would have been
signally worsted, when suddenly the same lady paramount, who had secured
to Dr. Lloyd the smile of the Eminence, spoke forth against him, and the
Eminence frowned.

"Dr. Lloyd," said the Queen of the Hill, "is an amiable creature, but on
this subject decidedly cracked. Cracked poets may be all the better for
being cracked,--cracked doctors are dangerous. Besides, in deserting
that old-fashioned routine, his adherence to which made his claim to
the Hill's approbation, and unsettling the mind of the Hill with wild
revolutionary theories, Dr. Lloyd has betrayed the principles on which
the Hill itself rests its social foundations. Of those principles Dr.
Fenwick has made himself champion; and the Hill is bound to support him.
There, the question is settled!"

And it was settled.

From the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus issued the word of command,
Dr. Lloyd was demolished. His practice was gone, as well as his repute.
Mortification or anger brought on a stroke of paralysis which, disabling
my opponent, put an end to our controversy. An obscure Dr. Jones, who
had been the special pupil and protege of Dr. Lloyd, offered himself as
a candidate for the Hill's tongues and pulses. The Hill gave him little
encouragement. It once more suspended its electoral privileges, and,
without insisting on calling me up to it, the Hill quietly called me
in whenever its health needed other advice than that of its visiting
apothecary. Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner, often to tea; and
again Miss Brabazon assured me by a sidelong glance that it was no fault
of hers if I were still single.

I had almost forgotten the dispute which had obtained for me so
conspicuous a triumph, when one winter's night I was roused from sleep
by a summons to attend Dr Lloyd, who, attacked by a second stroke a few
hours previously, had, on recovering sense, expressed a vehement desire
to consult the rival by whom he had suffered so severely. I dressed
myself in haste and hurried to his house.

A February night, sharp and bitter; an iron-gray frost below, a spectral
melancholy moon above. I had to ascend the Abbey Hill by a steep, blind