it originally had. Matters had not mended with him in more
advanced life, after he had deposited a further and further portion of
his heart and its affections in each successive one of a long row of
kindred graves; and as he stood over the last of them, holding Pansie by
the hand and looking down upon the coffin of his grandson, it is no
wonder that the old man wept, partly for those gone before, but not so
bitterly as for the little one that stayed behind. Why had not God taken
her with the rest? And then, so hopeless as he was, so destitute of
possibilities of good, his weary frame, his decrepit bones, his dried-up
heart, might have crumbled into dust at once, and have been scattered by
the next wind over all the heaps of earth that were akin to him.

This intensity of desolation, however, was of too positive a character
to be long sustained by a person of Dr. Dolliver's original gentleness
and simplicity, and now so completely tamed by age and misfortune. Even
before he turned away from the grave, he grew conscious of a slightly
cheering and invigorating effect from the tight grasp of the child's
warm little hand. Feeble as he was, she seemed to adopt him willingly
for her protector. And the Doctor never afterwards shrank from his duty
nor quailed beneath it, but bore himself like a man, striving, amid the
sloth of age and the breaking-up of intellect, to earn the competency
which he had failed to accumulate even in his most vigorous days.

To the extent of securing a present subsistence for Pansie and himself,
he was successful. After his son's death, when the Brazen Serpent fell
into popular disrepute, a small share of tenacious patronage followed
the old man into his retirement. In his prime, he had been allowed to
possess more skill than usually fell to the share of a Colonial
apothecary, having been regularly apprenticed to Dr. Swinnerton, who,
throughout his long practice, was accustomed personally to concoct the
medicines which he prescribed and dispensed. It was believed, indeed,
that the ancient physician had learned the art at the world-famous
drug-manufactory of Apothecary's Hall, in London, and, as some people
half-malignly whispered, had perfected himself under masters more subtle
than were to be found even there. Unquestionably, in many critical
cases he was known to have employed remedies of mysterious composition
and dangerous potency, which in less skilful hands would have been more
likely to kill th