was anxious to consult him. The interest I
felt in this strange man had impelled me, in the
first instance, to give him the opportunity of
speaking to me; reserving what I might have
to say, on my side, in relation to his employer,
until I was first satisfied that he was a person
in whose delicacy and discretion I could trust.
The little that he had said, thus far, had been
sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to
a gentleman. He had what I may venture to
describe as the unsought self-possession, which is
a sure sign of good breeding, not in England
only, but everywhere else in the civilised world.
Whatever the object which he had in view, in
putting the question that he had just addressed
to me, I felt no doubt that I was justified—so
far—in answering him without reserve.

"I believe I have a strong interest," I said,
"in tracing the lost remembrance which Mr.
Candy was unable to recal. May I ask whether
you can suggest to me any method by which I
might assist his memory?"

Ezra Jennings looked at me, with a sudden
flash of interest in his dreamy brown eyes.

"Mr. Candy's memory is beyond the reach
of assistance," he said. " I have tried to help
it often enough, since his recovery, to be able
to speak positively on that point."

This disappointed me; and I owned it.

"I confess you led me to hope for a less
discouraging answer than that," I said.

Ezra Jennings smiled. "It may not, perhaps,
be a final answer, Mr. Blake. It may be possible
to trace Mr. Candy's lost recollection,
without the necessity of appealing to Mr. Candy
himself."

"Indeed? Is it an indiscretion, on my
part, to ask——how?"

"By no means. My only difficulty in answering
your question, is the difficulty of explaining
myself. May I trust to your patience, if
I refer once more to Mr. Candy's illness; and
if I speak of it this time, without sparing you
certain professional details?"

"Pray go on! You have interested me already
in hearing the details."

My eagerness seemed to amuse——perhaps,
I might rather say, to please him. He smiled
again. We had by this time left the last
houses in the town behind us. Ezra Jennings
stopped for a moment, and picked some wild
flowers from the hedge by the roadside. " How
beautiful they are!" he said, simply, showing
his little nosegay to me. " And how few people
in England seem to admire them as they deserve!"

"You have not always been in England?" I
said.

"No. I was born, and partly brought up, in
one of our colonies. My father was an Englishman;
but my mother——We are straying away
from our subject, Mr. Blake; and it is my
fault. The truth is, I have associations with
these modest little hedgeside flowers——It
doesn't matter; we were speaking of Mr.
Candy. To Mr. Candy let us return."

Connecting the few words about himself which
thus reluctantly escaped him, with the melancholy
view of life which led him to place the conditions
of human happiness in complete oblivion
of the past, I felt satisfied that the story which
I had read in his face was, in two particulars at
least, the story that it really told. He had
suffered as few men suffer; and there was the
mixture of some foreign race in his English
blood.

"You have heard, I dare say, of the original
cause of Mr. Candy's illness?" he resumed.
"The night of Lady Verinder's dinner-party
was a night of heavy rain. My employer drove
home through it in his gig, and reached the
house, wetted to the skin. He found an urgent
message from a patient, waiting for him; and
he most unfortunately went at once to visit the
sick person, without stopping to change his
clothes. I was myself professionally detained,
that night, by a case at some distance from
Frizinghall. When I got back the next morning,
I found Mr. Candy's groom waiting in
great alarm to take me to his master's room.
By that time the mischief was done; the illness
had set in."

"The illness has only been described to me,
in general terms, as a fever," I said.

"I can add nothing which will make the
description more accurate," answered Ezra
Jennings. "From first to last, the fever assumed
no specific form. I sent at once to two of Mr.
Candy's medical friends in the town, both
physicians, to come and give me their opinion
of the case. They agreed with me that it
looked serious; but they both strongly
dissented from the view I took of the treatment.
We differed entirely in the conclusions which
we drew from the patient's pulse. The two
doctors, arguing from the rapidity of the beat,
declared that a lowering treatment was the only
treatment to be adopted. On my side, I admitted
the rapidity of the pulse, but I also
pointed to its alarming feebleness as indicating
an exhausted condition of the system,
and as showing a plain necessity for the
administration of stimulants. The two doctors
were for keeping him on gruel, lemonade,
barley water, and so on. I was for giving him
champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine.
A serious difference of opinion, as you see! a
difference between two physicians of established
local repute, and a stranger who was only an
assistant in the house. For the first few days,
I had no choice but to give way to my elders
and betters; the patient steadily sinking all the
time. I made a second attempt to appeal to the
plain, undeniably plain, evidence of the pulse.
Its rapidity was unchecked, and its feebleness
had increased. The two doctors took offence
at my obstinacy. They said, 'Mr. Jennings,
either we manage this case, or you manage it.
Which is it to be?' I said, ' Gentlemen, give
me five minutes to consider, and that plain
question shall have a plain reply.' When the
time had expired, I was ready with my answer.
I said, ' You positively refuse to try the stimulant
treatment?' They refused in so many