eisurely fashion, smiling a little at the
vociferous barking of his dog, Prince.

The dog is always confined in the stable at night, where he is a safe
companion and sure protection to the doctor's fine horse; and now, it
being past the time when he is usually liberated, he is making his
wrongs heard, and there will be no more repose or quiet until Prince is
set free.

"Poor fellow," calls his master, as he swings open the stable door.
"Poor Prince! Good, old boy! Come now, and you shall have a splendid
breakfast, to compensate for my neglect."

The dog bounds out, a splendid bull dog, strong, fierce, and white as
milk. He fawns upon his master, leaps about him, barks joyfully, and
then follows obediently to the kitchen. The dog provided for, Doctor
Heath goes in out of the rain, shaking the water from his coat, and
tossing it aside in favor of a dry one; and then he applies himself to
his own breakfast.

The warmth and comfort within are intensified by the dreariness without.
Mrs. Gray has lighted a fire in the grate, and he turns toward it,
sipping his coffee leisurely, enjoying the warmth all the more because
of an occasional glance out of the window.

Two men pass--two of the cottagers--his neighbors, who, dismayed by the
storm, have turned back toward their homes.

"Poor devils!" mutters the doctor, sympathetically; "they don't fancy
laying brick and mixing mortar in weather like this; and one of them has
no overcoat; I must keep that in mind, and supply him, if he will accept
one, from out my store."

He stirs the fire briskly, takes another sip from his half emptied cup,
and goes off in a reverie. Presently there comes the sound of a dog's
angry barking, and soon mingled with the canine cries, the voices of men
calling to one another, crying for aid. But so pleasant is his
meditation, and so deep, that their sounds do not rouse him; they reach
his ears, 'tis true; he has a vague sense of disagreeable sounds, but
they do not break his reverie.

Something else does, however, a brisk hammering on the street door, and
a loud, high pitched voice, calling:

"Heath! Heath, I say!"

He starts up, shakes himself and his ideas, together, and goes to face
the intruder upon his meditations. It is his neighbor across the way.

"Heath, have you lost your ears? or your senses?" he cries, impatiently;
"what the devil has your dog found, that has set these fellows in such a
panic? Something's wrong; they want you to