o
answer. It was at this moment that a hand was laid upon his arm, and a
voice said in his ear, "My dear Mr. Archie, you had better come and see
me."

He started, turned round, and found himself face to face with Dr.
Gregory. "And why should I come to see you?" he asked, with the defiance
of the miserable.

"Because you are looking exceedingly ill," said the doctor, "and you
very evidently want looking after, my young friend. Good folk are
scarce, you know; and it is not every one that would be quite so much
missed as yourself. It is not every one that Hermiston would miss."

And with a nod and a smile, the doctor passed on.

A moment after, Archie was in pursuit, and had in turn, but more
roughly, seized him by the arm.

"What do you mean? what did you mean by saying that? What makes you
think that Hermis--my father would have missed me?"

The doctor turned about and looked him all over with a clinical eye. A
far more stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have guessed the truth; but
ninety-nine out of a hundred, even if they had been equally inclined to
kindness, would have blundered by some touch of charitable exaggeration.
The doctor was better inspired. He knew the father well; in that white
face of intelligence and suffering, he divined something of the son; and
he told, without apology or adornment, the plain truth.

"When you had the measles, Mr. Archibald, you had them gey and ill; and
I thought you were going to slip between my fingers," he said. "Well,
your father was anxious. How did I know it? says you. Simply because I
am a trained observer. The sign that I saw him make, ten thousand would
have missed; and perhaps--_perhaps_, I say, because he's a hard man to
judge of--but perhaps he never made another. A strange thing to
consider! It was this. One day I came to him: 'Hermiston,' said I,
'there's a change.' He never said a word, just glowered at me (if ye'll
pardon the phrase) like a wild beast. 'A change for the better,' said I.
And I distinctly heard him take his breath."

The doctor left no opportunity for anti-climax; nodding his cocked hat
(a piece of antiquity to which he clung) and repeating "Distinctly" with
raised eyebrows, he took his departure, and left Archie speechless in
the street.

The anecdote might be called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for
Archie was immense. "I did not know the old man had so much blood in
him." He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal anti