so pale that his face stood out in relief
against the dark wall, and really could  not
be hidden so.

"Mr. Goodchild's friend has met with
an accident, Lorn," said Doctor Speddie.
"We want the lotion for a bad sprain."

A pause.

"My dear fellow, you are more than
usually absent to-night. The lotion for a
bad sprain."

"Ah! yes! Directly."

He was evidently relieved to turn away,
and to take his white face and his wild eyes
to a table in a recess among the bottles. But,
though he stood there, compounding the
lotion with his back towards them,
Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw
his gaze from the man. When he at length
did so, he found the Doctor observing him,
with some trouble in his face. "He is
absent," explained the Doctor, in a low voice.
"Always absent. Very absent."

"Is he ill?"

"No, not ill."

"Unhappy?"

"I have my suspicions that he was,"
assented the Doctor, "once."

Francis Goodchild could not but observe
that the Doctor accompanied these words
with a benignant and protecting glance at their
subject, in which there was much of the
expression with which an attached father
might have looked at a heavily afflicted son.
Yet, that they were not father and son must
have been plain to most eyes. The Assistant,
on the other hand, turning presently to ask
the Doctor some question, looked at him
with a wan smile as if he were his whole
reliance and sustainment in life.

It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy
chair, to try to lead the mind of Mr.
Goodchild in the opposite easy chair, away from
what was before him. Let Mr. Goodchild
do what he would to follow the Doctor,
his eyes and thoughts reverted to the
Assistant. The Doctor soon perceived it, and,
after falling silent, and musing in a little
perplexity, said:

"Lorn!"

"My dear Doctor."

"Would you go to the Inn, and apply that
lotion? You will show the best way of
applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild
can."

"With pleasure."

The Assistant took his hat, and passed like
a shadow to the door.

"Lorn!" said the Doctor, calling after
him.

He returned.

"Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till
you come home. Don't hurry. Excuse my
calling you back."

"It is not," said the Assistant, with his
former smile, "the first time you have called
me back, dear Doctor." With those words
he went away.

"Mr. Goodchild," said Doctor Speddie, in
a low voice, and with his former troubled
expression of face, "I have seen that your
attention has been concentrated on my friend."

"He fascinates me. I must apologise to
you, but he has quite bewildered and
mastered me."

"I find that a lonely existence and a long
secret," said the Doctor, drawing his chair a
little nearer to Mr. Goodchild's, "become in
the course of time very heavy. I will tell you
something. You may make what use you
will of it, under fictitious names. I know I
may trust you. I am the more inclined to
confidence to-night, through having been
unexpectedly led back, by the current of our
conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my
early life. Will you please to draw a little
nearer?"

Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and
the Doctor went on thus: speaking, for the
most part, in so cautious a voice, that the
wind, though it was far from high, occasionally
got the better of him.

When this present nineteenth century was
younger by a good many years than it is now, a
certain friend of mine,named Arthur Holliday,
happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster,
exactly in the middle of the race-week, or, in
other words, in the middle of the month of
September. He was one of those reckless, rattle-
pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young
gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity
in its highest perfection, and who scramble
carelessly along the journey of life making
friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go.
His father was a rich manufacturer, and had
bought landed property enough in one of the
midland counties to make all the born squires
in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of
him. Arthur was his only son, possessor in
prospect of the great estate and the great
business after his father's death; well
supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked
after, during his father's lifetime. Report,
or scandal, whichever you please, said that
the old gentleman had been rather wild in
his youthful days, and that, unlike most
parents, he was not disposed to be violently
indignant when he found that his son took
after him. This may be true or not. I
myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday
when he was getting on in years; and then
he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman
as ever I met with.

Well, one September, as I told you, young
Arthur comes to Doncaster, having decided
all of a sudden, in his hare-brained way, that
he would go to the races. He did not reach
the town till towards the close of the evening,
and he went at once to see about his dinner
and bed at the principal hotel. Dinner they
were ready enough to give him; but as for a
bed, they laughed when he mentioned it. In
the race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon
thing for visitors who have not bespoken