an exceedingly delicate and graceful frame, was a
model for a sculptor. He had long light hair,
tied back with a ribbon, after the fashion of
acrobats, and thin pale features, very firm and
still. This was the Signor Uberto, who was
going once more to risk his life—as every trapeze
performer must risk it—for our night's amusement.

He stood, while his father carefully tried the
fastenings of each handle, and examined the
platform on which were laid the mattresses. But the
youth himself did not look at anything. Perhaps
he was so used to it that the performance seemed
safe and natural — perhaps he felt it was useless
to think whether it were so or not, since he
must perform. Or, possibly, he took all easily
and did not think of anything.

But I could not help putting myself into the
place of the young man, and wondering whether
he really did recognise any danger, more especially
as I saw, lurking and watching in the exit corner
somebody belonging to him — the young woman
in black, who was his sister, I concluded, since
when I visited him she had brought lint
and rags and helped me to tie up his sore hand.
Over this hand his father was exceedingly anxious,
because every day's loss of performance was a
loss to the treasury. This was the first day of
the signor's reappearance, and the circus was
full to the roof.

Popularity is seldom without a reason, and I
do not deny that the flying trapeze is a very
curious and even beautiful sight. In this case
the extreme grace of the performer added to its
charm. He mounted, agile as a deer, the high
platform at the end of the circus, and swung
himself off by the elastic ropes, clinging only
with his hands, his feet extended, like one of the
floating figures in pictures of saints or fairies. His
father, standing opposite, and watching intently
his time — for a second might prove either too
late or too soon — threw the other trapeze forward
to meet him. The young man dropped lightly
into it, hanging a moment in air between whiles,
apparently as easily as if he had been born to fly,
then gave himself another swing, and alighted
safely at the far end of the platform.

This feat he accomplished twice, thrice, four
times, each time with some slight variation, and
more gracefully than the last, followed by a low
murmur of applause — the people were too breathless
to shout. The fifth time, when one had
grown so familiar with the performance that one
had almost ceased to shudder, and began to
regard the performer not as a human creature at
all, with flesh and blood and bones, but as some
painted puppet, or phantasmal representation on
a wall — the fifth time he missed his grasp of the
second trapeze, and fell.

It was so sudden; — one moment the sight of
that flying figure — the next, a crash on the
mattressed platform, on its edge, from which rolled
off a helpless something, falling with a heavy
thud on the sawdust floor below.

I heard a scream it might be from one of my
girls, but I could not heed them. Before I well
knew where I was, I found myself with the young
man's head on my knee, trying to keep off the
crowd that pressed round.

"Is he dead?"

"Na, na—he's no deid. Give him some whisky.
He's coming to, puir laddie."

But he did not " come to," not for hours, until
I had had him taken to the nearest available
place — which happened to be my own house, for
his lodgings were at the other end of the town.

All the long night that I sat by the poor young
man's bedside, I felt somehow as if I had
murdered him, or helped to do it. For had I not
"followed the multitude to do evil," added my
seven half-crowns to tempt him, or rather the
skin-flint father who was making money by him,
to risk his life for our amusement? True, he
would have done it all the same had I not been
there; but still I was there. I and my young
ladies had swelled the number which had lured
him on to his destruction, and I felt very guilty.
What they felt, poor dears, I do not know; it
was quite impossible for me to take any heed of
them. My whole attention was engrossed by the
case. I wonder if people suppose us surgeons
hardened because we get into the habit of speaking
of our fellow-creatures merely as " a case."

No one hindered my doing what I would with
my patient, so I had him removed to my own room
—the spare rooms being occupied—examined
him, and set a simple fracture of the arm, which
was the only visible injury. Then I sat and
watched him, as conscience-stricken as if I had
been one of the old Roman emperors at a gladiator
show, or a modern Spanish lady at a bull-fight,
or a fast young English nobleman hiring rooms
at the Old Bailey in order to witness a judicial
murder. For had I not sat calmly by, a spectator
of what was neither more nor less than murder?

Somebody behind me seemed to guess at my
thought.

"If he had died, doctor, I should always have
said he had been murdered."

There was an intensity in the voice which quite
startled me, for she had kept so quietly in the
background that I had scarcely noticed her till
now — the young woman in black. She was not
a pretty young woman — perhaps not young at all
—being so deeply pitted with small-pox that
her age became doubtful to guess at ; but she
had kind soft eyes, an intelligent forehead, and
an excessively sweet English voice.

If there is one thing more than another by
which I judge a woman, it is her voice; not her
set " company" voice, but the tone she speaks in
ordinarily or accidentally. That never deceives,
Looks may. I have known fair-faced blue-eyed
angels, and girls with features as soft and lovely
as houris, who could talk in most dulcet fashion
till something crossed them, and then out came
the hard metallic ring, which always indicates
that curse of womanhood — worst of all faults
except uutruthfulness—temper. And I have heard
voices, belonging to the plainest of faces, which