know who it was, now; but I can't take it, sir. You must take it back. You know it was you sent it, sir?" 

 "Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled beyond measure, "I don't understand you. What do you mean?" 

 "Don't deny it, sir. Please not to," she said imploringly, the tears starting to her eyes. "I am very grateful,—indeed I am. But I can't accept it. Do take it again." 

 "Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty voice, "what do you mean? I have sent you nothing,—nothing at all. I have, therefore, nothing to receive again." 

 She looked at him fixedly, evidently impressed by the fervor of his denial. 

 "You sent me nothing to-night, sir?" she asked, doubtfully. 

 "Nothing at any time, nothing," he answered, firmly. 

 It would have been folly to have disbelieved the truthful look of his wondering face, and she turned away in amazement and confusion. There was a long pause. 

 "I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse any assistance I can render to your child," he said, at length. 

 She started, and replied, tremblingly and confusedly, "No, sir; we shall be grateful to you, if you can save her"; and went quickly, with a strange abstraction on her white face, into the inner room. He followed her at once, and, hardly glancing at Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in stupefaction, with her apron over her head and face, he laid his hat on a table, went to the bedside of the little girl, and felt her head and pulse. He soon satisfied himself that the little sufferer was in no danger, under proper remedies, and now dashed down a prescription on a leaf from his pocket-book. Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly at him during the examination, suddenly bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened alacrity, when he asked if there was any one that could go out to the apothecary's, and said, "Sure I wull!" He had a little trouble to make her understand that the prescription, which she took by the corner, holding it away from her, as if it were going to explode presently, and staring at it upside down, was to be left—"left, mind you, Mrs. Flanagan—with the apothecary—Mr. Flint—at the nearest corner—and he will give you some things, which you are to bring here." But she had shuffled off at last with a confident, "Yis, sur—aw, I knoo," her head nodding satisfied assent, and her big thumb covering the note on the margin, "Charge 

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