'er so close ye wall him,
Do the best that ye may,
Blind Love, if so ye call him,
He will find out his way."

Miss Marty had found out a way.

The Major's house, as you have been told, looked down the length of
Fore Street; and on the left hand (the harbour side) of Fore Street,
at some seventy yards' distance, Dr. Hansombody resided over his
dispensary, or, as he preferred to call it, his "Medical Hall."
The house stood aligned with its neighbours but overtopped them by an
attic storey; and in the north side of this attic a single window
looked up the street to the Major's windows--Miss Marty's among the
rest--and was visible from them.

Behind this attic window the Doctor, when released from professional
labours, would sit and read, or busy himself in arranging his cases
of butterflies, of which he had a famous collection; and somehow--I
cannot tell you when or how, except that it began in merest
innocence--Miss Marty had learnt to signal with her window-blind and
the Doctor to reply with his. This evening, for instance, by
lowering her blind to the foot of the second pane from the top, Miss
Marty had telegraphed,--

"The Major requests you to call and take wine with him."

The Doctor drew his blind down rapidly and as rapidly raised it
again. This said, "I come at once," and Miss Marty knew that it
added, "On the wings of love!"

A slight agitation of the lower left-hand corner of her blind
supplemented the message thus,--

"There will be brown sherry."

"Then will I also call to-morrow," said the Doctor's blind,
roguishly, meaning that if the Major indulged in brown sherry (which
never agreed with him) this convivial visit would almost certainly be
followed by a professional one. Miss Marty, having no signal for the
green-sealed Madeira, postponed explanation, and drew her blind
midway down the window. The Doctor did the same with his.
This signal and its answer invariably closed their correspondence;
but what it meant, what tender message it conveyed, remained an
uncommunicated secret. By it Miss Marty--but shall I reveal the
arcana of that virgin breast? Let us be content to know that
whatever it conveyed was, on her part, womanly; on his, gallant and
even dashing.

The Doctor lost no time in fetching his hat and gold-topped cane.
He knew the Major's brown sherry; it had twice made a voyage to the
West Indies. He hied him up the street with alacrity.

The Collector, thou