the heart,
then."

"What made her have it?"

"That is a deep question in the most interesting of sciences,--that of
the metamorphoses of diseases. Many men would answer it according to
their many minds. To the best of my belief, the cause of Miss Dudley's
having a pain in her heart lay in her great-grandfather's toe."

"O Doctor! what _do_ you mean?"

"The gout."

"Well, that sounds very aristocratic and imposing; but, notwithstanding,
I know you are laughing at me."

"No, I am not. It is no laughing matter."

"Why, is it dangerous?"

"Dangerous!" said he. "It is deadly. Why, Katy, I never shall dare to
tell you anything again, if you are going to look so frightened! _She_
did not when I told her."

"Does she know?"

"Yes, and makes no secret of it, and is not unlikely to mention it
before you; so that you must accustom yourself to the idea, and be
prepared to face it as she does."

"How came she to know?"

"She asked me. I gave up very early in my practice, for several reasons,
the habit of lying to my patients. If they are cowards, or if, for any
reason, I think the truth and the whole truth would shorten their days,
I often tell them little or nothing; but I tell them nothing but the
truth. She is not a person to be put off from knowing what she has a
right to know."

"How did she take it?"

"Nobly and simply, without any affectation of indifference. As she put
the question, I laid my hand on her pulse; and, as it went on pretty
firmly, I went on too. When I had said all there was to say, she thanked
me earnestly, and said, as sweetly as anything could possibly be said,
that the information would add double weight to the cautions and other
counsels I had given her, and told me that, if I ever came to be in a
situation like hers, she trusted that I should find the comfort of being
dealt with with candor and kindness like mine. After all, Katy, she may
live yet many years, and die at last of something else; and that is
about the best that can be prognosticated of you and me, my dear."

"'Tis true the young _may_ die, but the old must," thought I. I was half
comforted, and only half. Yet the pensive shadow of coming doom--or
shall I not rather say the solemn dawn of approaching eternity?--seemed
to lend a new and more unearthly charm to the lovely spiritual vision I
cherished in my mind.

Presently, instead of passing a gate, the Doctor turned in at it, and
drove smoothly up the gentle slope of a