end Kennedy.
He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards had been the
companion of a famous traveller, in the days when there were continents
with unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him
known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country
practice--from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting like
a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence
is of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that
unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a
general truth in every mystery.

A good many years ago now, on my return from abroad, he invited me to
stay with him. I came readily enough, and as he could not neglect his
patients to keep me company, he took me on his rounds--thirty miles or
so of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for him on the roads; the horse
reached after the leafy twigs, and, sitting in the dogcart, I could hear
Kennedy's laugh through the half-open door left open of some cottage. He
had a big, hearty laugh that would have fitted a man twice his size, a
brisk manner, a bronzed face, and a pair of grey, profoundly attentive
eyes. He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and an
inexhaustible patience in listening to their tales.

One day, as we trotted out of a large village into a shady bit of road,
I saw on our left hand a low, black cottage, with diamond panes in the
windows, a creeper on the end wall, a roof of shingle, and some roses
climbing on the rickety trellis-work of the tiny porch. Kennedy pulled
up to a walk. A woman, in full sunlight, was throwing a dripping blanket
over a line stretched between two old apple-trees. And as the bobtailed,
long-necked chestnut, trying to get his head, jerked the left hand,
covered by a thick dog-skin glove, the doctor raised his voice over the
hedge: "How's your child, Amy?"

I had the time to see her dull face, red, not with a mantling blush, but
as if her flat cheeks had been vigorously slapped, and to take in the
squat figure, the scanty, dusty brown hair drawn into a tight knot at
the back of the head. She looked quite young. With a distinct catch in
her breath, her voice sounded low and timid.

"He's well, thank you."

We trotted again. "A young patient of yours," I said; and the doctor,
flicking the chestnut absently, muttered, "Her husband used to be."

"She seems a dull creature," I remarked listlessly.

"Precisely," sa