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other inspiration, and speaking with such velocity that his words ran into each other, pell-mell, he continued: " Th' small girl's sick, sur. Begorra, I wor just pullin' on th' boots tuh gaw for the docther, in th' nixt streth, an' summons him to hur relehf, fur it's bad she is. A'id betther be goan." Another start, and a movement to put on the boot instantly, baffled by his getting the lamp into the leg of it, and involving himself in difficulties in trying to get it out again without dropping either, and stopped finally by Dr. Renton.

"You needn't go, Mr. Flanagan. I'll see to the child. Don't go."

He stepped slowly up the stairs, followed by the bewildered Flanagan. All this time Dr. Renton was listening to the racket from the bar-room. Clinking

of glasses, rattling of dishes, trampling of feet, oaths and laughter, and a confused din of coarse voices, mingling with boisterous calls for oysters and drink, came, hardly deadened by the partition walls, from the haunt below, and echoed through the corridors. Loud enough within-louder in the street without, where the oysters and drink were reeling and roaring off to brutal dreams. People trying to sleep here; a sick child up stairs. Listen! "Two stew! One roast! Four ale! Hurry 'em up! Three stew! In number six! One fancy-two roast! One sling! Three brandy-hot! Two stew! One whisk' skin! Hurry 'em up! What yeh 'bout! Three brand' punch-hot! Four stew! What-ye-e-h 'BOUT! Two gin-cock-t'il! One stew! Hu-r-r-y 'em up!" Clashing, rattling, cursing, swearing, laughing, shouting, trampling, stumbling, driving, slamming of doors. 66 Hu-r-ry 'em UP.”

"Flanagan," said Dr. Renton, stopping at the first landing, "do you have this noise every night?"

"Naise! Hoo! Divil a night, docther, but I'm wehked out ov me bed wid 'em, Sundays an' all. Sure didn't they murdher wan of 'em, out an' out, last night!"

"Is the man dead?"

"Dead? Troth he is. An' cowld." "H'm"-through his compressed lips. "Flanagan, you needn't come up. I know the door. Just hold the light for me here. There, that'll do. Thank you." He whispered the last from the top of the second flight.

"Are ye there, docther?" Flanagan anxious to the last, and trying to peer VOL. VII.-3

up at him with the lamp-light in his eyes.

"Yes. That'll do. Thank you;" in the same whisper. Before he could tap at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly, and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," and then bounced out again, with a "Walk royt in, if you plaze; here's the choild"-and whisked in again, with a "Sure an' Jehms was quick;" never once looking at him, and utterly unconscious of the presence of her landlord. He had hardly stepped into the room and taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller came from the inner chamber with a lamp in her hand. How she started! With her pale face grown suddenly paler, and her hand on her bosom, she could only exclaim: "Why, it's Dr. Renton!" and stand, still and dumb, gazing with a frightened look at his face, whiter than her own. Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and, then with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, and was heard to tumble over something within, and tumble something else over in her fall, and gather herself up with a subdued howl, and subside.

“Mrs. Miller,” began Dr. Renton, in a low, husky voice, glancing at her frightened face, "I hope you'll be composed. I spoke to you very harshly and rudely to-night; but I really was not myself-I was in anger-and I ask your pardon. Please to overlook it all, and-but I will speak of this presently; now-I am a physician; will you let me look now at your sick child?"

He spoke hurriedly, but with evident sincerity. For a moment her lips faltered; then a slow flush came up, with a quick change of expression on her thin, worn face, and, reddening to painful scarlet, died away in a deeper pallor.

“Dr. Renton,” she said hastily, “I have no ill-feeling for you, sir, and I know you were hurt and vexed-and I know you have tried to make it up to me again, sir-secretly. I know who it was, now; but I can't take it, sir. You must take it back. You know it was you sent it, sir."

"Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled beyond measure, "I don't understand you. What do you mean?"

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"Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty voice, "what do you mean? I havo sent you nothing-nothing at all. I have, therefore, nothing to receive again."

She looked at him fixedly, evidently impressed by the fervor of his denial.

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You sent me nothing to-night, sir?" she asked, doubtfully.

"Nothing, at any time-nothing," he answered, firmly.

It would have been folly to have disbelieved the truthful look of his wondering face, and she turned away in amazement and confusion. There was a long pause.

"I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse any assistance I can render to your child," he said, at length.

She started, and replied, tremblingly and confusedly, "No, sir; we shall be grateful to you, if you can save her❞— and went quickly, with a strange abstraction on her white face, into the inner room.

He followed her at once,

and, hardly glancing at Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in stupefaction, with her apron over her head and face, he laid his hat on a table, went to the bedside of the little girl, and felt her head and pulse. .He soon satisfied himself that the little sufferer was in no danger, under proper remedies, and now dashed down a prescription on a leaf from his pocket-book. Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly at him during the examination, suddenly bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened alacrity, when he asked if there was any one that could go out to the apothecary's, and said, "sure I wull!" He had a little trouble to make her understand that the prescription, which she took by the corner, holding it away from her, as if it was going to explode presently, and staring at it upside down-was to be left-left, mind you, Mrs. Flanagan-with the apothecary-Mr. Flint-at the nearest corner -and he will give you some things, which you are to bring here." But she had shuffled off at last with a confident, "yis, sur-aw, I knoo," her head nodding satisfied assent, and her big thumb covering the line on the margin, "charge to Dr. C. Renton, Bowdoin-street,"

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"O, Dr. Renton, I am very grateful," was the tremulous reply; "and we will follow all directions, sir. It is hard to keep her quiet, sir; we keep as still as we can, and the other children are very still; but the street is very noisy all the day time and evening, sir, and-"

"I know it, Mrs. Miller. And I'm afraid those people down stairs disturb you somewhat."

"They make some stir in the evening, sir; and it's rather loud in the street sometimes, at night. The folks on the lower floors are troubled a good deal, they say."

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Well they may be. Listen to the bawling outside, now, cold as it is. Hark! A hoarse group on the opposite sidewalk beginning a song. "Ro-0-1 on, sil-ver mo-o-n," moon ceases to roll in a sudden explosion of yells and laughter, sending up broken fragments of curses, ribald jeers, whoopings, and cat-calls, high into the night-air. "Gal-a-ng! Hi-hi! What ye-e-h 'bout!"

"This is outrageous, Mrs. Miller. Where's the watchman?"

She smiled faintly. "He takes one of them off occasionally, sir; but he's afraid; they beat him sometimes." A long_pause.

"Isn't your room rather cold, Mrs. Miller?" He glanced at the black stove, dimly seen in the outer room. "It is necessary to keep the rooms cool, just now, but this air seems to me cold."

Receiving no answer, he looked at her, and saw the sad truth in her averted face.

"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, flushing to the roots of his hair. “I might have known, after what you said to me this evening."

"We had a little fire here, to-day, sir," she said, struggling with the pride and shame of poverty; "but we have been out of firing for two or three days,

and we owe the wharfman something now. The two boys picked up a few chips; but the poor children find it hard to get them, sir. Times are very hard with us, sir; indeed, they are. We'd have got along better, if my husband's money had come, and your rent would have been paid."

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'Never mind the rent!-don't speak of that!" he broke in, with his face all aglow. "Mrs. Miller, I haven't done right by you-I know it. Be frank with me. Are you in want of-have you-need of food?"

No need of answer to that faintly stammered question. The thin, rigid face was covered from his sight by the worn, wan hands, and all the pride and shame of poverty, and all the frigid truth of cold, hunger, anxiety, and sickened sorrow, they had concealed, had given way at last in a rush of tears. He could not speak. With a smitten heart, he knew it all, now. Ah! Dr. Renton, you know these people's tricks? you know their lying blazon of poverty, to gather sympathy?

Mrs. Miller"-she had ceased weeping, and, as he spoke, she looked at him, with the tear-stains still on her agitated face, half ashamed that he had seen her "Mrs. Miller, I am sorry. This shall all be remedied. Don't tell me it shan't! Don't! I say it shall! Mrs. Miller, I'm-I'm ashamed of myself. I am, indeed."

"I am very grateful, sir, I'm sure," said she; "but we don't like to take charity, though we need help; but we can get along now, sir-for, I suppose I must keep it, as you say you didn't send it, and use it, for the children's sake and thank God for his good mercy-since I don't know, and never shall, where it came from, now."

"Mrs. Miller," he said quickly, "you spoke in this way before; and I don't know what you refer to. What do you mean by-it?

"O, I forgot, sir; it puzzles me so. You see, sir, I was sitting here after I got home from your house, thinking what I should do, when Mrs. Flanagan came up stairs with a letter for me, that she said a strange man left at the door for Mrs. Miller; and Mrs. Flanagan couldn't describe him well, or understandably; and it had no direction at all, only the man inquired who was the landlord, and if Mrs. Miller had a sick child, and then said the letter was

for me; and there was no writing inside the letter, but there was fifty dollars. That's all, sir. It gave me a great shock, sir; and I couldn't think who sent it, only when you came tonight, I thought it was you; but you said it wasn't, and I never shall know who it was, now. It seems as if the hand of God was in it, sir, for it came when everything was darkest, and I was in despair."

"Why, Mrs. Miller," he slowly answered, "this is very mysterious. The man inquired if I was the owner of the house-oh, no-he only inquired who was-but then he knew I was the -O bother! I'm getting nowhere. Let's see. Why it must be some one you know, or that knows your circumstances."

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'But there's no one knows them but yourself, and I told you," she replied; "no one else but the people in the house. It must have been some rich person, for the letter was a gilt-edge sheet, and there was perfume in it, sir."

"Well,

"Strange," he murmured. I give it up. All is, I advise you to keep it, and I'm very glad some one did his duty by you in your hour of need, though I'm sorry it was not myself. Here's Mrs. Flanagan."

There was a good deal done, and a great burden lifted off an humble heart —nay, two! before Dr. Renton thought of going home. There was a patient gained, likely to do Dr. Renton more good than any patient he had lost. There was a kettle singing on the stove, and blowing off a happier steam than any engine ever blew on that rail-road whose unmarketable stock had singed Dr. Renton's fingers. There was a yellow gleam flickering from the blazing fire on the sober binding of a good old Book upon a shelf with others, a rarer medical work than ever slipped at auction from Dr. Renton's hands, since it kept the sacred lore of Him who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the poor, and who was also the Physician of souls.

And there were other offices performed, of lesser range than these, before he rose to go. There were cooling mixtures blended for the sick child; medicines arranged; directions given; and all the items of her tendance orderly foreseen, and put in pigeon holes of When and How, for service. At last he rose to go. "And now,

Mrs. Miller," he said, "I'll come here at ten in the morning, and see to our patient. She'll be nicely by that time. And-(listen to those brutes in the street!-twelve o'clock, too-ah! there's the bell), as I was saying, my offense to you being occasioned by your debt to me, I feel my receipt for your debt should commence my reparation to you; and I'll bring it to-morrow. Mrs. Miller-you don't quite come at me—what I mean is-you owe me, under a notice to quit, three months' rent. Consider that paid, in full. I never will take a cent of it from you-not a copper. And I take back the notice. Stay in my house as long as you like; the longer the better. But, up to this date, your rent's paid. There. I hope you'll have as happy a Christmas as circumstances will allow, and I mean you shall."

A flush of astonishment-of indefinabe emotion, overspread her face.

"Dr. Renton, stop, sir!" He was moving to the door. "Please, sir, do hear me! You are very good-but I oan't allow you to-Dr. Renton, we are able to pay you the rent, and we will and we must-here-now. O, sir, my gratefulness will never fail to you-but, here-here-be fair with me, sir, and do take it!"

She had hurried to a chest of drawers, and came back with the letter which she had rustled apart with eager, trembling hands, and now, unfolding the single bank-note it had contained, she thrust it into his fingers as they closed.

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Here, Mrs. Miller"-she had drawn back with her arms locked on her bosom, and he stepped forward-“no, no. This shan't be. Come, come, you must take it back. Good heavens!" he spoke low, but his eyes blazed in the red glow which broke out on his face, and the crisp note in his extended hand shook violently at her-"Sooner than take this money from you, I would perish in the street! What! Do you think I will rob you of the gift sent you by some one who had a human heart for the distresses I was aggravating? sooner than-here take it! O, my God! what's this!"

The red glow on his face went out, with this exclamation, in a pallor like marble, and he jerked back the note to his starting eyes; Kilby Bank-Boston-Fifty Dollars. For a minute he gazed at the motionless bill in his hand.

Then, with his hueless lips compressed, he seized the blank letter from his astonished tenant, and looked at it, turning it over and over. Grained letterpaper-gilt edged-with a favorite perfume in it. Where's Mrs. Flanagan? Outside the door, sitting on the top of the stairs, with her apron over her head, crying. Mrs. Flanagan! Here! In she tumbled, her big feet kicking her skirts before her, and her eyes and face as red as a beet.

"Mrs. Flanagan, what kind of a looking man gave you this letter at the door to-night?"

"A-w, Docther Rinton, dawn't ax me! Bother, an' all, an' sure an' I cudn't see him wud his fur-r hat, an' he a-ll boondled oop wud his co-at oop on his e-ars, an' his big han'kershuf smotherin' thuh mouth uv him, an' sorra a bit uv him tuh be looked at, sehvin' thuh poomple on thuh ind uv his naws!"

"The what on the end of his nose ?" Thuh poomple, sur."

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"What does she mean, Mrs. Miller?" said the puzzled questioner, turning to his tenant.

"I don't know, sir, indeed," was the reply; "she said that to me, and I couldn't understand her."

"It's thuh poomple, docther. Dawn't ye knoo? Thuh big, flehmin poomple oop there." She indicated the locality, by flattening the rude tip of her own nose with her broad forefinger.

"O-h, the pimple! I have it." So he had. Netty, Netty!

He said nothing, but sat down in a chair, with his bold, white brow knitted, and the warm tears in his dark eyes.

"You know who sent it, sir, don't you?" asked his wondering tenant, catching the meaning of all this.

"Mrs. Miller, do. But I cannot tell you. Take it now, and use it. It is doubly yours. There. Thank you."

She had taken it, with an emotion in her face that gave a quicker motion to his throbbing heart. He rose to his feet, hat in hand, and turned away. The noise of a passing group of roysterers in the street without, came strangely loud into the silence of that

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warm tears in his dark eyes had flowed on his face, which was pale; and his firm lip quivered.

"I hope He will, Mrs. Miller-I hope He will. It should have been said oftener."

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'He was on the outer threshold. Mrs. Flanagan had, somehow, got there before him, with a lamp, and he followed her down through the dancing shadows, with blurred eyes. On the lower landing, he stopped to hear the jar of some noisy wrangle, thick with oaths, from the bar-room. He listened for a moment, and then turned to the staring stupor of Mrs. Flanagan's rugged visage.

"Sure, their at ut, docther, wud a wull," she said, smiling.

"Yes. Mrs. Flanagan, you'll stay up with Mrs. Miller to-night, won't you?" "Dade an' I wull, sur."

"That's right. Do. And make her try and sleep, for she must be tired. Keep up a fire-not too warm, you understand. There'll be wood and coal coming to-morrow, and she'll pay you back."

"A-w, docther, dawn't, noo!"

"Well, well. And-look here; have you got anything to eat in the house? Yes; well; take it up stairs. Wake up those two boys, and give them something to eat. Don't let Mrs. Miller stop you. Make her eat something. Tell her I said she must. And, first of all, get your bonnet, and go to that apothecary's-Flint's-for a bottle of port wine, for Mrs. Miller. Hold on. There's the order." (He had a leaf out of his pocket-book in a minute, and wrote it down.) "Go with this, the first thing. Ring Flint's bell, and he'll wake up. And here's something for your own Christmas dinner, to-morrow." Out of the roll of bills, he drew one of the tens-Kilby Bank-Boston —and gave it to Mrs. Flanagan.

"A-w, dawn't noo, docther."

"Bother! Its for yourself, mind. Take it. There. And now unlock the door. That's it. Good night, Mrs. Flanagan."

"An' meh thuh Hawly Vurgin hape blessin's on ye, Docther Rinton, wud a-ll thuh compliments uv thuh sehzin, for yur thuh”

He lost the end of Mrs. Flanagan's parting benedictions, in the moonlit street. He did not pause till he was at the door of the oyster-room. He

paused then, to make way for a tipsy company of four, who reeled out-the gas-light from the bar-room on the edges of their sodden, distorted faces -giving three shouts and a yell, as they slammed the door behind them.

He pushed after a party that was just entering. They went at once for drink to the upper end of the room, where a rowdy crew, with cigars in their mouths, and liquor in their hands, stood before the bar, in a knotty wrangle concerning some one who was killed. Where is the keeper? O, there he is, mixing hot brandy punch for two. Here, you, sir, go up quietly, and tell Mr. Rollins Dr. Renton wants to see him. The waiter came back presently to say Mr. Rollins would be right along. Twentyfive minutes past twelve. Oyster trade nearly over. Gaudy curtained booths on the left all empty, but two. Oyster openers and waiters-three of them in all-nearly done for the night, and two of them sparring and scuffling behind a pile of oysters on the trough, with the colored print of the great prize fight between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, in a veneered frame above them on the wall. Blower up from the fire opposite the bar, and stewpans and griddles empty and idle on the bench beside it, among the unwashed bowls and dishes. Oyster trade nearly over. Bar still busy.

Here comes Rollins in his shirtsleeves, with an apron on. Thick-set, muscular man-frizzled head, low forehead, sharp, black eyes, flabby face, with a false, greasy smile on it now, oiling over a curious, stealthy expression of mingled surprise and inquiry, as he sees his landlord here at this unusual hour.

"Come in here, Mr. Rollins; I want to speak to you."

"Yes, sir. Jim," (to the waiter) "go and tend bar." They sat down in one of the booths, and lowered the curtain. Dr. Renton, at one side of the table within, looking at Rollins, sitting leaning on his folded arms, at the other side.

"Mr. Rollins, I am told the man who was stabbed here last night is dead. Is that so?"

"Well, he is, Dr. Renton. Died this afternoon."

"Mr. Rollins, this is a serious matter; what are you going to do about it ?"

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