tly being only inhabited
by the inmates, who showed no anxiety to ascertain by looking out who
it was that had accomplished the task of getting to this barren and
sequestered place.

On knocking at the door, it was opened by a young woman about eighteen
years of age. She appeared to be delicate--being thin in her person,
pale in her complexion, and of an irritable temperament, for she
started when she saw me. An expression of melancholy pervaded
features not unhandsome, and attracted particularly my attention, by
almost instantly exciting my sympathy. I asked her if George B---- was
in the house. She answered that her father, for such he was, had just
gone to bed, having been for some time ailing. I told her that it was
upon that account I had come to see him. She seemed then to know who I
was, and thanked me for my attention. I stepped in; and, as I followed
the young woman through a long passage to the room occupied by her
father, she told me that her mother had died about a year before, and
that there was no other individual living in the house but her and her
remaining parent. A gloomy, unhappy pair! thought I, as I looked on
her sombre face, and heard the wind moaning through the big, open
house.

On entering the room, which was cold and poorly furnished, I observed
George B---- sitting up in his bed reading a book, which I discovered
to be a large Bible. He had a napkin bound round his temples. His face
exhibited the true melancholic hue, being of a swarthy yellow; his
eyes wore the heaviness generally found in people of that temperament;
the muscles were firmly bound down by the rigid, severe, and
desponding expression of dejection, generally found associated with
these other characteristics; and throughout his face and manner there
was exhibited an indifference to surrounding objects, which was only
very partially relaxed by his recognition of me as I entered. There
was, however, nothing of the look of a diseased man about him; for his
face was full and fleshy, his nerves firm and well strung, his eye
steady and unclouded, and his voice, as he welcomed me in, strong, and
even rough and burly. His face resembled very much the _ideal_ of that
of the old Covenanters; and the large Bible he held in his hands aided
the conception, and increased the picturesque effect of the whole
aspect of the man.

He knew, or took it for granted, that I was the surgeon he had sent
for, pointed to a chair, that I might sit down,