he knows more about it than other
folks. Them doctors, when they once gets into a house, there's no
getting them out again; and as for the good they do, they dose you, they
bleed you--ay, bleed you in both senses of the word! Ha! ha! You know
what I mean, sir."

I was disgusted at the vulgar contempt of this man for the noble
profession of which I myself was a member, and was determined not to
laugh at his low wit. I passed over his execrable joke with gravity, so
as not to appear to see it.

"If the doctor knows so little about it," I said, at length, "what do
the people say it is? What is the popular opinion of the young lady's
malady? What are the symptoms?"

I saw by the coachman's countenance that he was rather surprised at the
interest I took in the health of the young lady, and I fancy he
suspected that I was a doctor.

"Symptoms, sir!" he cried. "Oh, sir, very strange ones, they say."

"How strange?" I asked.

"Well, sir, there be a good many strange reports about the squire's
adopted daughter. I b'ain't a-goin' to give credit to everything I hear,
but folks _do_ say----" here he lowered his voice almost to a whisper
and looked mysteriously, first over one shoulder, then over the other.

"Well," said I, "Folks say----"

"Yes, sir, folks _do_ say that the young lady, leastways, the squire's
adopted daughter, is--is----" (here he put his finger to his lips and
looked still more mysterious).

"Well?" said I, impatiently.

"That the poor young lady is under some evil spell--that she is
_bewitched_."

"Dear me! you don't say so," I exclaimed, with well-feigned
astonishment.

"Yes, sir," he replied; "leastways, so folks say about here."

"How very dreadful! Poor young lady! Perhaps she is in love. Love is the
only witchcraft that ever came in the way of my experience," I remarked.

"And sure, sir, you're not far out there neither; for if there's one
thing more like witchcraft than another, it is that same _love_. Lor',
bless yer, sir, don't I remember when I was courtin' my Poll, how I'd
stand under her winder of a rainy night for hours, just to get a peep at
her shadow on the winder blind, and how I'd go for days without my beer,
till folks didn't know what to make of me? Ah! but I got over it,
though, in time. I got cured, but" (here he gave me a knowing look) "it
wasn't by a _doctor_. No, sir, it wasn't by a _doctor_," he said, with a
contemptuous emphasis on the last word.

"Now, who do you thi