of the professions known as 'liberal.' He had no taste for
the law, and he had not the companionable character which alone can make
life in the army pleasant in time of peace. His beliefs, or his lack of
belief, together with an honourable conscience, made him naturally
opposed to all churches. On the other hand, he had been attracted almost
from his childhood by scientific subjects, at a period when the
discoveries of the last fifty years appeared as misty but beatific
visions to men of science. To the disappointment and, to some extent, to
the humiliation of his family, he insisted upon studying medicine, at
the University of St. Andrew's, as soon as he had obtained his ordinary
degree at Cambridge. And having once insisted, nothing could turn him
from his purpose, for he possessed English tenacity grafted upon Scotch
originality, with a good deal of the strength of both races.

While still a student he had once made a tour in Italy, and like many
northerners had fallen under the mysterious spell of the South from the
very first. Having a sufficient allowance for all his needs, as has been
said, and being attracted by the purely scientific side of his
profession rather than by any desire to become a successful
practitioner, it was natural enough that on finding himself free to go
whither he pleased in pursuit of knowledge, he should have visited Italy
again. A third visit had convinced him that he should do well to spend
some years in the country; for by that time he had become deeply
interested in the study of malarious fevers, which in those days were
completely misunderstood. It would be far too much to say that young
Dalrymple had at that time formed any complete theory in regard to
malaria; but his naturally lonely and concentrated intellect had
contemptuously discarded all explanations of malarious phenomena, and,
communicating his own ideas to no one, until he should be in possession
of proofs for his opinions, he had in reality got hold of the beginning
of the truth about germs which has since then revolutionized medicine.

The only object of this short digression has been to show that Angus
Dalrymple was not a careless idler and tourist in Italy, only half
responsible for what he did, and not at all for what he thought. On the
contrary, he was a man of very unusual gifts, of superior education, and
of rare enterprise; a strong, silent, thoughtful man, about
eight-and-twenty years of age, and just beginning t