Abbey Hill declared that the time had come to
reassert its dormant privilege—it must have a
doctor of its own choosing—a doctor who might,
indeed, be permitted to to visit Low Town from
motives of humanity or gain, but who must
emphatically assert his special allegiance to Abbey
Hill by fixing his home on that venerable
promontory. Miss Brabazon, a spinster of uncertain
age, but undoubted pedigree, with small fortune,
but high nose, which she would pleasantly
observe was a proof of her descent from Humphrey
Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have
no doubt, in spite of chronology, that she very
often dined), was commissioned to inquire of me
diplomatically, and without committing Abbey
Hill too much by the overture, whether I would
take a large and antiquated mansion, in which
abbots were said to have lived many centuries
ago, and which was still popularly styled Abbots'
House, situated on the verge of the Hill, as in
that case the "Hill" would think of me.

"It is a large house for a single man, I allow,"
said Miss Brabazon, candidly; and then added,
with a sidelong glance of alarming sweetness,
"but when Dr. Fenwick has taken his true
position (so old a family!) amongst Us, he need
not long remain single, unless he prefer it."

I replied, with more asperity than the occasion
called for, that I had no thought of changing
my residence at present. And if the Hill wanted
me, the Hill must send for me.

Two days afterwards Dr. Lloyd took Abbots'
House, and in less than a week was proclaimed
medical adviser to the Hill. The election had
been decided by the fiat of a great lady, who
reigned supreme on the sacred eminence, under
the name and title of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.

"Dr. Fenwick," said this lady, "is a clever
young man and a gentleman, but he gives himself
airs—the Hill does not allow any airs but its
own. Besides, he is a new comer: resistance to
new comers, and, indeed, to all things new,
except caps and novels, is one of the bonds that
keep old-established societies together. Accordingly,
it is by my advice that Dr. Lloyd has
taken Abbots' House; the rent would be too
high for his means if the Hill did not feel
bound in honour to justify the trust he has placed
in its patronage. I told him that all my friends,
when they had anything the matter with them,
would send for him; those who are my friends
will do so. What the Hill does, plenty of
common people down there will do also:—so that
question is settled!" And it was settled.

Dr. Lloyd, thus taken by the hand, soon
extended the range of his visits beyond the Hill,
which was not precisely a mountain of gold to
doctors, and shared with myself, though in a
comparatively small degree, the much more lucrative
practice of Low Town.

I had no cause to grudge his success, nor did I.
But to my theories of medicine his diagnosis was
shallow, and his prescriptions obsolete. When
we were summoned to a joint consultation,
our views as to the proper course of treatment
seldom agreed. Doubtless he thought I
ought to have deferred to his seniority in years;
but I held the doctrine which youth deems a
truth and age a paradox, namely, that in science
the young men are the practical elders, inasmuch
as they are schooled in the latest experiences
science has gathered up, while their seniors are
cramped by the dogmas they were schooled to
believe when the world was some decades the
younger.

Meanwhile my reputation continued rapidly to
advance; it became more than local; my advice
was sought even by patients from the metropolis.
That ambition which, conceived in early youth,
had decided my career and sweetened all its
labours—the ambition to take a rank and leave
a name as one of the great pathologists, to
whom humanity accords a grateful, if calm,
renown—saw before it a level field and a certain goal.

I know not whether a success far beyond that
usually attained at the age I had reached served
to increase, but it seemed to myself to justify
the main characteristic of my moral organisation
—intellectual pride.

Though mild and gentle to the sufferers under
my care, as a necessary element of professional
duty, I was intolerant of contradiction from those
who belonged to my calling, or even from those
who, in general opinion, opposed my favourite
theories.

I had espoused a school of medical philosophy
severely rigid in its inductive logic. My creed
was that of stern materialism. I had a contempt
for the understanding of men who accepted with
credulity what they could not explain by reason.
My favourite phrase was "common sense." At
the same time I had no prejudice against bold
discovery, and discovery necessitates conjecture,
but I dismissed as idle all conjecture that could
not be brought to a practical test.

As in medicine I had been the pupil of Broussais,
so in metaphysics I was the disciple of
Condillac. I believed with that philosopher that
"all our knowledge we owe to Nature, that in
the beginning we can only instruct ourselves
through her lessons, and that the whole art of
reasoning consists in continuing as she has
compelled us to commence." Keeping natural
philosophy apart from the doctrines of revelation, I
never assailed the last, but I contended that by
the first no accurate reasoner could arrive at the
existence of the soul as a third principle of being
equally distinct from mind and body. That by a
miracle man might live again, was a question of
faith and not of understanding. I left faith to
religion, and banished it from philosophy. How
define with a precision to satisfy the logic of
philosophy what was to live again? The body? We
know that the body rests in its grave till by the
process of decomposition its elemental parts
enter into other forms of matter. The mind?
But the mind was as clearly the result of the
bodily organisation as the music of the harpsichord
is the result of the instrumental mechanism.
The mind shared the decrepitude of the body in