in the unlucky position of a penniless heir, and I’ve been brought up so—In fact, I must leave home from time to time; and, if my father gets confirmed in this notion of his that my health is worse for my absence, he’ll stop the supplies altogether.”

“May I ask where you do spend your time when you are not at Hamley Hall?” asked Mr. Gibson, with some hesitation in his manner.

“No!” replied Osborne reluctantly. “I will tell you this:—I stay with friends in the country. I lead a life which ought to be conducive to health, because it is thoroughly simple, rational, and happy. And now I’ve told you more about it than my father himself knows. He never asks me where I’ve been; and I shouldn’t tell him if he did—at least, I think not.”

Mr. Gibson rode on by Osborne’s side, not speaking for a moment or two.

“Osborne, whatever scrapes you may have got into, I should advise your telling your father boldly out. I know him; and I know he’ll be angry enough at first, but he’ll come round, take my word for it; and, somehow or another, he’ll find money to pay your debts and set you free, if it’s that kind of difficulty; and if it’s any other kind of entanglement, why, still he’s your best friend. It’s this estrangement from your father that’s telling on your health, I’ll be bound.”

“No,” said Osborne, “I beg your pardon; but it’s not that; I am really out of order. I daresay my unwillingness to encounter any displeasure from my father is the consequence of my indisposition; but I’ll answer for it, it is not the cause of it. My instinct tells me there is something really the matter with me.”

“Come, don’t be setting up your instinct against the profession!” said Mr. Gibson cheerily.

He dismounted, and throwing the reins of his horse round his arm, he looked at Osborne’s tongue and felt his pulse, asking him various questions. At the end he said—

“We’ll soon bring you about; though I should like a little more quiet talk with you, without this tugging brute for a third. If you’ll manage to ride over and lunch with us to-morrow, Dr. Nicholls will be with us; he’s coming over to see old Rowe; and you shall have the benefit of the advice of two doctors instead of one. Go home now; you’ve had enough exercise for the middle of a day as hot as this is. And don’t mope in the house, listening to the maunderings of your stupid instinct.”

“What else have I to do?” said Osborne. “My father and I are not companions; one can’t read and write for ever, especially when there’s no end to be gained by it. I don’t mind telling you—but in confidence, recollect—that I’ve been trying to get some of my poems published; but there’s no one like a publisher for taking the conceit out of one. Not a man among them would have them as a gift.”

“Oho! so that’s it, is it, Master Osborne! I thought there was some mental cause for this depression of health. I wouldn’t trouble my head about it, if I were you; though that’s always very easily said, I know. Try your hand at prose, if you can’t manage to please the publishers with poetry; but, at any rate, don’t go on fretting over spilt milk. But I mustn’t lose my time here. Come over to us to-morrow, as I said; and, what with the wisdom of two doctors, and the wit and folly of three women, I think we shall cheer you up a bit.”

So saying, Mr. Gibson remounted, and rode away at the long slinging trot so well known to the country people as the doctor’s pace.

“I don’t like his looks,” thought Mr. Gibson to himself at night, as over his daybooks he reviewed the events of the day. “And then his pulse! But how often we’re all mistaken; and, ten to one, my own hidden enemy lies closer to me than his does to him—even taking the worse view of the case!”