scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."

THE GREAT DOCTOR.

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.

"Hello! hello! which way now, Mrs. Walker? It'll rain afore you git
there, if you've got fur to go. Hadn't you better stop an' come in till
this thunder-shower passes over?"

"Well, no, I reckon not, Mr. Bowen. I'm in a good deal of a hurry. I've
been sent for over to John's." And rubbing one finger up and down the
horn of her saddle, for she was on horseback, Mrs. Walker added,
"Johnny's sick, Mr. Bowen, an' purty bad, I'm afeard." Then she tucked
up her skirts, and, gathering up the rein, that had dropped on the neck
of her horse, she inquired in a more cheerful tone, "How's all the
folks,--Miss Bowen, an' Jinney, an' all?"

By this time the thunder began to growl, and the wind to whirl clouds of
dust along the road.

"You'd better hitch your critter under the wood-shed, an' come in a bit.
My woman'll be glad to see you, an' Jinney too,--there she is now, at
the winder. I'll warrant nobody goes along the big road without her
seein' 'em." Mr. Bowen had left the broad kitchen-porch from which he
had hallooed to the old woman, and was now walking down the gravelled
path, that, between its borders of four-o'clocks and other common
flowers, led from the front door to the front gate. "We're all purty
well, I'm obleeged to you," he said, as, reaching the gate, he leaned
over it, and turned his cold gray eyes upon the neat legs of the horse,
rather than the anxious face of the rider.

"I'm glad to hear you're well," Mrs. Walker said; "it a'most seems to me
that, if I had Johnny the way he was last week, I wouldn't complain
about anything. We think too much of our little hardships, Mr. Bowen,--a
good deal too much!" And Mrs. Walker looked at the clouds, perhaps in
the hope that their blackness would frighten the tears away from her
eyes. John was her own boy,--forty years old, to be sure, but still a
boy to her,--and he was very sick.

"Well, I don't know," Mr. Bowen said, opening the mouth of the horse and
looking in it; "we all have our troubles, an' if it ain't one thing it's
another. Now if John wasn't sick, I s'pose you'd be frettin' about
somethin' else; you mustn't think you're particularly sot apart in your
afflictions, any how. This rain that's getherin' is goin' to spile a
couple of acres of grass for me, don't you see?"

Mrs. Walker was hurt. Her neighbor had not given her the sympathy she
expected; he