two days. The one means of setting this unlucky error
right, without further delay, was to deliver his prescription himself,
and to break through his own rules for the second time by attending to a
case of illness--purely as an act of atonement.

The patient lived in a house nearly opposite to the British Museum. In
this northward direction he now set his face.

He made his apologies, and gave his advice--and, getting out again
into the street, tried once more to shape his course for the College
of Surgeons. Passing the walled garden of the British Museum, he looked
towards it--and paused. What had stopped him, this time? Nothing but a
tree, fluttering its bright leaves in the faint summer air.

A marked change showed itself in his face.

The moment before he had been passing in review the curious little
interruptions which had attended his walk, and had wondered humorously
what would happen next. Two women, meeting him, and seeing a smile on
his lips, had said to each other, "There goes a happy man." If they had
encountered him now, they might have reversed their opinion. They would
have seen a man thinking of something once dear to him, in the far and
unforgotten past.

He crossed over the road to the side-street which faced the garden. His
head drooped; he moved mechanically. Arrived in the street, he lifted
his eyes, and stood (within nearer view of it) looking at the tree.

Hundreds of miles away from London, under another tree of that gentle
family, this man--so cold to women in after life--had made child-love,
in the days of his boyhood, to a sweet little cousin long since numbered
with the dead. The present time, with its interests and anxieties,
passed away like the passing of a dream. Little by little, as the
minutes followed each other, his sore heart felt a calming influence,
breathed mysteriously from the fluttering leaves. Still forgetful of
the outward world, he wandered slowly up the street; living in the old
scenes; thinking, not unhappily now, the old thoughts.

Where, in all London, could he have found a solitude more congenial to a
dreamer in daylight?

The broad district, stretching northward and eastward from the British
Museum, is like the quiet quarter of a country town set in the midst of
the roaring activities of the largest city in the world. Here, you can
cross the road, without putting limb or life in peril. Here, when you
are idle, you can saunter and look about, safe from collisio