champion; and the Hill is bound to support him.
There, the question is settled!"

And it was settled.

From the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus
issued the word of command, Dr. Lloyd was
demolished. His practice, as  well as his
repute. Mortification or anger brought on a
stroke of paralysis which, disabling my opponent,
put an end to our controversy. An obscure
Dr. Jones, who had been the special pupil
and protégé of Dr. Lloyd, offered himself as
a candidate for the Hill's tongues and pulses.
The Hill gave him little encouragement. It
once more suspended its electoral privileges,
and, without insisting on calling me up to it, it
quietly called me in whenever its health needed
other advice than that of its visiting apothecary.
Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner, often
to tea. And again, Miss Brabazon assured me
by a sidelong glance that it was no fault of hers
if I were still single.

I had almost forgotten the dispute which had
obtained for me so conspicuous a triumph, when
one winter's night I was roused from sleep by a
summons to attend Dr. Lloyd, who, attacked by
a second stroke a few hours previously, had, on
recovering sense, expressed a vehement desire to
consult the rival by whom he had suffered so
severely. I dressed myself in haste and hurried
to his house.

A February night, sharp and bitter. An iron-
grey frost below—a spectral melancholy moon
above. I had to ascend the Abbey Hill by a
steep, blind lane between high walls. I passed
through stately gates, which stood wide open,
into the garden ground that surrounded the old
Abbots' House. At the end of a short carriage-
drive, the dark and gloomy building cleared itself
from leafless skeleton trees, the moon resting
keen and cold on its abrupt gables and lofty
chimney-stacks. An old woman servant
received me at the door, and, without saying a
word, led me through a long low hall, and up
dreary oak stairs, to a broad landing, at which
she paused for a moment, listening. Round and
about hall, staircase, and landing, were ranged
the dead specimens of the savage world which it
had been the pride of the naturalist's life to
collect. Close where I stood yawned the open jaws
of the fell anaconda—its lower coils hid, as
they rested on the floor below, by the winding
of the massive stairs. Against the dull wainscot
walls were pendant cases stored with grotesque
unfamiliar mummies, seen imperfectly by the
moon that shot through the window-panes, and
the candle in the old woman's hand. And as
now she turned towards me, nodding her signal
to follow, and went on up the shadowy passage,
rows of gigantic birds—ibis and vulture, and
huge sea glaucus—glared at me in the false life
of their angry eyes.

So I entered the sick-room, and the first glance
told me that my art was powerless there.

The children of the stricken widower were
grouped round his bed, the eldest apparently
about fifteen, the youngest four; one little girl
—the only female child—was clinging to her
father's neck, her face pressed to his bosom, and
in that room her sobs alone were loud.

As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his
face, which had been bent over the weeping
child, and gazed on me with an aspect of strange
glee, which I failed to interpret. Then, as I
stole towards him softly and slowly, he pressed
his lips on the long fair tresses that streamed
wild over his breast, motioned to a nurse who
stood beside his pillow to take the child away,
and, in a voice clearer than I could have expected
in one on whose brow lay the unmistakable
hand of death, he bade the nurse and the
children quit the room. All went sorrowfully, but
silently, save the little girl, who, borne off in the
nurse's arms, continued to sob as if her heart
were breaking.

I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it
moved me to the quick. My eyes wistfully
followed the children, so soon to be orphans, as one
after one went out into the dark chill shadow,
and amidst the bloodless forms of the dumb brute
nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond the death-
room of man. And when the last infant shape
had vanished, and the door closed with a jarring
click, my sight wandered loiteringly around the
chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on
the broken form, beside which I now stood in all
that glorious vigour of frame which had fostered
the pride of my mind.

In the moment consumed by my mournful
survey, the whole aspect of the place impressed
itself ineffaceably on life-long remembrance.
Through the high, deep-sunken casement, across
which the thin, faded curtain was but half drawn,
the moonlight rushed, and then settled on the
floor in one shroud of white glimmer, lost under
the gloom of the death-bed. The roof was low,
and seemed lower still by heavy intersecting
beams, which I might have touched with my
lifted hand. And the tall, guttering candle by
the bedside, and the flicker from the fire
struggling out through the fuel but newly heaped on
it, threw their reflexion on the ceiling just over
my head in a reek of quivering blackness, like an
angry cloud.

Suddenly I felt my arm grasped: with his left
hand (the right side was already lifeless); the dying
man drew me towards him nearer and nearer, till
his lips almost touched my ear. And, in a voice
now firm, now splitting into gasp and hiss, thus
he said:

"I have summoned you to gaze on your own
work! You have stricken down my life at the
moment when it was most needed by my
children, and most serviceable to mankind. Had I
lived a few years longer, my children would have
entered on manhood, safe from the temptations
of want and undejected by the charity of strangers.
Thanks to you, they will be penniless orphans.
Fellow-creatures afflicted by maladies your
pharmacopœia had failed to reach, came to me for
relief, and they found it. 'The effect of imagination,'