part? How does he regard this relapse from medical jurisprudence to
common general practice?"

"Thorndyke," said I, "is unmoved by any catastrophe; and he not only
regards the 'Decline and Fall-off of the Medical Jurist' with
philosophic calm, but he even favours the relapse, as you call it. He
thinks it may be useful to me to study the application of medico-legal
methods to general practice."

"That sounds rather unpleasant--for the patients, I mean," remarked Miss
Haldean.

"Very," agreed her aunt. "Most cold-blooded. What sort of man is Dr.
Thorndyke? I feel quite curious about him. Is he at all human, for
instance?"

"He is entirely human," I replied; "the accepted tests of humanity
being, as I understand, the habitual adoption of the erect posture in
locomotion, and the relative position of the end of the thumb--"

"I don't mean that," interrupted Mrs. Haldean. "I mean human in things
that matter."

"I think those things matter," I rejoined. "Consider, Mrs. Haldean, what
would happen if my learned colleague were to be seen in wig and gown,
walking towards the Law Courts in any posture other than the erect. It
would be a public scandal."

"Don't talk to him, Mabel," said Mrs. Hanshaw; "he is incorrigible. What
are you doing with yourself this morning, Lucy?"

Miss Haldean (who had hastily set down her cup to laugh at my imaginary
picture of Dr. Thorndyke in the character of a quadruped) considered a
moment.

"I think I shall sketch that group of birches at the edge of Bradham
Wood," she said.

"Then, in that case," said I, "I can carry your traps for you, for I
have to see a patient in Bradham."

"He is making the most of his time," remarked Mrs. Haldean maliciously
to my hostess. "He knows that when Mr. Winter arrives he will retire
into the extreme background."

Douglas Winter, whose arrival was expected in the course of the week,
was Miss Haldean's fiance. Their engagement had been somewhat
protracted, and was likely to be more so, unless one of them received
some unexpected accession of means; for Douglas was a subaltern in the
Royal Engineers, living, with great difficulty, on his pay, while Lucy
Haldean subsisted on an almost invisible allowance left her by an uncle.

I was about to reply to Mrs. Haldean when a patient was announced, and,
as I had finished my breakfast, I made my excuses and left the table.

Half an hour later, when I started along the road to the village of
Bradham, I had t