those fair ladies of romance, who peopled her maiden dreams. From to-night, she stood apart; no longer a child, but a woman worshipped afar, by some gallant lover who feared to sign his name.

She put out the candle, for the moonlight filled the room, and pattered across the polished floor, in her bare feet, to her little white bed, the letter in her hand.

“Rose bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst.”

The hours went by and still Iris was awake, the mute paper crushed close against her breast. “I wonder,” she murmured, her crimson face hidden in the pillow, “I wonder who he can be!”

[Pg 91]

[Pg 91]

VII

Friends

The Doctor’s modest establishment consisted of two rooms over the post-office. Here his shingle swung idly in the Summer breeze or resisted the onslaughts of the Winter storms. The infrequent patient seldom met anyone else in the office, but in case there should be two at once, a dusty chair had been placed in the hall.

T

Both rooms were kept scrupulously clean by the wife of the postmaster, who lived on the same floor, but the bottles ranged in orderly rows upon the shelves were left severely alone, because the ministering influence lived in hourly dread of poison.

Here the family physician of East Lancaster lived out his monotonous existence. When he had first taken up his abode there, he had set up his household gods upon the hill, in company with his countrymen. He soon [Pg 92]found, however, that his practice was confined to the hill, and that, for all he might know to the contrary, East Lancaster was unaware of his existence.

[Pg 92]

It was the postmaster who first set him right. “If you’re a-layin’ out to heal them as has the money to pay for it,” he had said, “you’ll have to move. This yere brook, what seems so innocent-like, is the chalk mark that 

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