very attractive one.

Dunailin is a small town in Western Con-naught, seven miles from the
nearest railway station. It possesses a single street, straggling and
very dirty, a police barrack, a chapel, which seems disproportionately
large, and seven shops. One of the shops is also the post office.
Another belongs to John Conerney, the butcher. The remaining five are
public houses, doing their chief business in whisky and porter, but
selling, as side lines, farm seeds, spades, rakes, hoes, stockings,
hats, blouses, ribbons, flannelette, men's suits, tobacco, sugar, tea,
postcards, and sixpenny novels. The chief inhabitants of the town are
the priest, a benevolent but elderly man, who lives in the presbytery
next the large chapel; Sergeant Rahilly, who commands the six members of
the Royal Irish Constabulary and lives in the barrack; and Mr. Timothy
Flanagan, who keeps the largest shop in the town and does a bigger
business than anyone else in porter and whisky.

Dr. Farelly, standing on his doorstep with his pipe in his mouth, looked
up and down the street. He was more than ever convinced that it might
be very difficult to get a doctor to go to Dunailin, and still harder to
get one to stay. The town lay, to all appearance, asleep under the blaze
of the noonday August sun. John Conerney's greyhounds, five of them,
were stretched in the middle of the street, confident that they would
be undisturbed. Sergeant Rahilly sunned himself on a bench outside the
barrack door, and Mr. Flanagan sat in a room behind his shop nodding
over the ledger in which his customers' debts were entered. Dr. Farelly
sighed. He had advertised for a doctor to take his place in all the
likeliest papers, and had not been rewarded by a single answer. He was
beginning to think that he must either resign his position at Dunailin
or give up the idea of war service.

At half-past twelve the town stirred in its sleep and partially awoke.
Paddy Doolan, who drove the mail cart, arrived from Derrymore. Dr.
Farelly strolled down to the post office, seeking, but scarcely hoping
for, a letter in reply to his advertisements. He was surprised and very
greatly pleased when the postmistress handed him a large envelope, fat
and bulging, bearing a Manchester postmark. The moment he opened it Dr.
Farelly knew that he had got what he wanted, an application for the
post he had to offer. He took out, one after another, six sheets of
nicely-printed matter. These were test