V.

Till the asp bit fiercer?—
Cuckoo, speak to me;
Lovest thou this island
Girdled by the sea?
Still that name repeating,
In a tongue unknown—
Hence, thou bird ungrateful,
Or beware this stone.

"OLD MURDER."

I.

"THERE goes Old Murder," said Mr. Miller,
the manager of the Old County Bank, as he
stood at his window, with his nose resting on
the top of the wire blind.

"Old Murder " was the nickname given to
Doctor Thatcher by the inhabitants of Crossford.
It was a sarcastic nickname, but used
in all good nature; for the old doctor, though
somewhat penurious and brusque, was a worthy
man who had done his duty and combated death
with success and profit for forty years.

Crossford is a pleasant compact town, and
as the doctor drove up the High-street every
one saw him. The butcher, among his sheep,
pinked with white slashes, took off his hat as he
jointed a loin of mutton on his enormous
sacrificial crimsoned block. The bookbinder standing
at his press, torturing a volume in his vice,
saw him through his window, and, with some
scraps of gold leaf in his hair, opened his glass
door to watch him. They saw him over the
little buttery door at the post-office, and the
young men at the draper's discussed him as
they unrolled carpets and uncoiled ribbons.

Dr. Thatcher was bound on a visit to his old
friend the rector, at Woodcot, a suburb of Crossford;
wrapped up in a coarse, threadbare, brown
great-coat, with a comforter hiding all but his
nose, he drove on in his rickety pony-chaise,
his old blind white mare never exceeding
her usual pace for any possible provocation. He
drove brooding as he went over old times; old
men can only look back, the future has little
pleasure for them. With his thick rough grey
eyebrows, furrowed frosty face, and big grey
whiskers, Dr. Thatcher looked the very type of
elderly sagacity.

It was a bright November morning, and the
sunshine, like the presence of one we love, shed
hope, joy, and comfort on the meanest and
humblest object.

The doctor was in high spirits, and ripe for
gossip. As he rang at the door, a portly,
comfortable butler presented himself, and called a
page-boy to hold the doctor's horse.

"How are you, Roberts?" said the doctor,
with gruff kindliness. "How's the gout? Take
less ale; that's my prescription."

The rector's study was a delightful den, walled
with sound old books and hung with exquisite
water-colour sketches by Cox, Copley Fielding,
Turner, and Prout—rainy moors, sunny cliffs
bathed in pure blue air, enchanted mountains,
magic sunsets, and crumbling gable-ended
Norman houses. There were rare hothouse
flowers on the table, a Venetian glass, and rare
photographs, old editions of the Elizabethan
poets, ivory elephants, little palanquins, and
Japanese fans. It was the den of a man of refinement,
travel, sense, and taste. The windows
looked out on a broad sweep of soft green lawn,
and a fine cedar-tree spread out its vast dark
ledges of boughs in eternal benediction. A bright
lively fire rose in a waving pyramid from the
grate, that shone as bright as a Life Guardsman's
breastplate. The doctor, growling at the delay,
was turning over some photographs of Cornwall,
the granite cliffs reproduced with every crack,
cleft, and splinter, when there came a cheery tap
at the window. It was the rector, cheerful as
ever, and rejoicing to see his old friend. As the
doctor opened the glass door that led out to the
lawn, the rector stepped in and shook him by
the hands.

"We want you to see George; his throat's
bad, doctor," said the rector.

"Very well, then—here I am. Mind, no
gratis advice; down in the bill. I earned my
experience hard, and I don't mean to part with
it gratis."

"No one asked you, doctor," said the rector,
who knew his old friend's manner. He rang
the bell, and the frightened page-boy entered.

"Page-boy!" growled the doctor. "In my
time they were called only boys. Get a silver
spoon."

The boy went and returned in a moment
with a spoon.

"Now open your mouth. I'm not going to
cut your tongue off. Open it wider, sir."

The doctor held back the boy's tongue with
the bowl of the spoon and looked in.

"Bah!" he said. "Mere inflammation.
I'll send you a gargle, boy. If it gets worse,
why, I can snip off the end of the uvula. There,
that'll do, page-boy. When I was young, Buller,"
said the doctor, as the door closed, and he threw
himself back roughly in a sloping arm-chair, "I
made this my golden rule—always, if possible, to
get my fee when the patient was still in pain. It
made the fee larger, and it was paid quicker.
I never pretended to refuse fees, and then took
them. I only wish I could get my Jack into
better ways about these things. Delicacy is
thrown away on people; every one is for himself."

The rector laugned, poked the fire, and
rubbed his hands. He enjoyed the doctor in his
dry, splenetic moods.

"I've come to ask you to dine with the
Prices and one or two more, to-night at seven:
plain mutton and a bit of fish, hare soup, and a
pudding—no fuss. I don't ask you for show,
or to wipe off a debt; but because I like you.
Rubber afterwards. Your old flame, my sister,
will be there, and Letty, of course, or Jack
won't hear of it."

"How is your adopted son, doctor?"

"How is he? What, Harkness? Why,
strong as a lion, of course; riding, shooting,
singing better than any other young man in
Surrey. This morning the dear boy insisted on