riority. As the neighborhood abounded with goitres, he
concluded to leave without making further inquiries. On the following
morning, they reached a small mountain village. Doctor Sixtus addressed
himself to the village doctor, rode about the country with him for
several days and, at last, left without having accomplished his
mission. He, however, made a note of the names of several of the
parties they had seen.

His knightly pride had well-nigh left him. He had looked into the
dwellings of want and had beheld so much that told of toil and misery,
that the careless indifference with which beings of the same flesh and
blood could live in palaces, seemed like a dream. In this outer world,
existence is mere toil and care, nothing more than a painful effort to
sustain life, with no other outlook than that of renewed toil and care
on the morrow.

"A truce to sentiment," said the doctor to himself. "Things happen thus
in this fine world. Men and beasts are alike. The stag in the forest
doesn't ask what becomes of the bird, and the bird, unless it be a
stork, doesn't care what becomes of the frogs! Away with sentimentality
and dreams of universal happiness!"

The doctor traveled to and fro among the Highlands, always careful to
keep near the telegraph stations, and, as instructed, reporting twice a
day. He despaired of accomplishing his mission, and wrote to his chief
that, although he could not find married women, there were lots of
excellent unmarried ones. He therefore suggested that, as it would not
do to deceive a queen, it would be well to have the most acceptable one
married to her lover at once.

While awaiting a reply, he remained at a village near the lake, the
resident physician of which had been a fellow-student of his.

The scarred face of the portly village doctor was refulgent with traces
of the student cheer which in former days they had enjoyed in common.
He was still provided with a never-failing thirst and ready for
all sorts of fun. His manners had become rustic, and it was with a
self-complacent feeling Sixtus thought of the difference in their
positions.

Doctor Kumpan--this was a nickname he had received while at the
university--looked upon his friend's excursion in search of a nurse as
if it were one of their old student escapades. He rode with him over
hill and dale, never loth to make a slight detour, if, by that means,
they might gain an inn, where he could gratify his hunger with a good
meal