it was a weakness, but I really couldn't watch him going about in
agony."

"Is the desire to relieve a fellow creature's suffering a weakness?"
asked Miss Gascoyne.

Austin appeared to reflect. "I almost think it is when the chances are
tolerably even that you're going to blind him. Still, I got the thing
out, and that man never quite knew the risks he ran. The next week
another of them dropped a hogshead on to his foot, and smashed it
badly--they don't wear boots, you know. He seemed quite convinced that I
could cure him, and, as the risk was his, I undertook the thing. You can
see him on the forecastle yonder, and he isn't limping. After that my
fame went abroad, and they send their cripples off to me at several of
the desolate places we call at. I always give them something, but
whatever quantity of water the manual recommends I put in twice as
much."Miss Gascoyne looked at him curiously. She had not met a young man of this type before, and was not sure that she approved of him. She also fancied that he was a trifle egotistical, which he certainly was not, and it never occurred to her that he was merely rambling on for her entertainment because he felt it his duty.

"Don't you think that one should always have faith in one's prescriptions and act upon it?" said her aunt. "I endeavour to do so when I dose the village people who come to me."

Austin laughed. "Well," he said, "you see, I haven't any, and, perhaps if I had, it would be a little rough on others. Still, as a matter of fact, they do get better--that is, most of them."

Miss Gascoyne looked startled. "Is it right to abuse the ignorant people's credulity like that?" she said, and stopped a trifle awkwardly, while a little twinkle crept into Jacinta's eyes.

"Mr. Austin hasn't really killed anybody yet," she said. "You haven't told us what you think of Teneriffe, Muriel."

Miss Gascoyne turned her face astern, and there was appreciation, and something deeper than that, in her blue eyes, which had seen very little of the glory of this world as yet. High overhead the great black wall of the Cañadas cut, a tremendous ebony rampart, against the luminous blue, and beyond it the peak's white cone gleamed ethereally above its wrappings of fleecy mist. Beneath, the Atlantic lay a sheet of glimmering turquoise 

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