rapidly, while the Doctor held the light. "Ah," he
added, when he was safe across, "I knew I should get over all right."

"You did not seem very certain about it just now," said the Doctor.
"However, I am sincerely glad you are come. I knew no weather would
stop you."

"Thank you, old friend," said the Vicar; "and how is the patient?"

"Going fast. More in your line than mine. The man believes himself
bewitched."

"Not uncommon," said the Vicar, "in these parts; they are always
bothering me with some of that sort of nonsense."

They went in. Only an ordinary scene of poverty, dirt, and vice, such
as exists to some extent, in every parish, in every country on the
globe. Nothing more than that, and yet a sickening sight enough.

A squalid, damp, close room, with the earthen floor sunk in many places
and holding pools of water. The mother smoking in the chimney corner,
the eldest daughter nursing an illegitimate child, and quarrelling with
her mother in a coarse, angry tone. The children, ragged and hungry,
fighting for the fireside. The father away, at some unlawful occupation
probably, or sitting drinking his wages in an alehouse. That was what
they saw, and what any man may see to-day for himself in his own
village, whether in England or Australia, that working man's paradise.
Drink, dirt, and sloth, my friends of the working orders, will produce
the same effects all over the world.

As they came in the woman of the house rose and curtseyed to the Vicar,
but the eldest girl sat still and turned away her head. The Vicar,
after saluting her mother, went gently up to her, and patting the
baby's cheek, asked her kindly how she did. The girl tried to answer
him, but could only sob. She bent down her head again over the child,
and began rocking it to and fro.

"You must bring it to be christened," said the Vicar kindly. "Can you
come on Wednesday?"

"Yes, I'll come," she said with a sort of choke. And now the woman
having lit a fresh candle, ushered them into the sick man's room.

"Typhus and scarlatina!" said the Doctor. "How this place smells after
being in the air. He is sensible again, I think."

"Quite sensible," the sick man answered aloud. "So you've come, Mr.
Thornton; I'm glad of it; I've got a sad story to tell you; but I'll
have vengeance if you do your duty. You see the state I am in!"

"Ague!" said the Vicar.

"And who gave it me?"

"Why, God sent it to you," said the Vicar. "All people living i