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WORKS BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, New York and London.

“MERCIFUL HEAVENS, WAS THAT THE DOCTOR?”—SEE [PAGE 228].

DOCTOR IZARD

BY

ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

(Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

Author of “The Leavenworth Case,” “Marked ‘Personal,’”

“The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock,” etc., etc.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press

1895

Copyright 1895

BY

ANNA KATHARINE ROHLFS

Entered at Stationer’s Hall, London

All Rights Reserved

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To My Friend

JOSEPH FRANCIS DALY

A. K. G. R.

CONTENTS.

DOCTOR IZARD.

PART I.

A MIDNIGHT VISITANT.

I.
NO. THIRTEEN, WARD THIRTEEN.

IT was after midnight. Quiet had settled over the hospital, and in Ward 13 there was no sound and scarcely a movement. The nurse, a strong and beautiful figure, had fallen into a reverie, and the two patients, which were all the ward contained, lay in a sleep so deep that it seemed to foreshadow the death which was hovering over them both.

They were both men. The one on the right of the nurse was middle-aged; the one on the left somewhat older. Both were gaunt, both were hollow-eyed, both had been given up by the doctors and attendants. Yet there was one point of difference between them. He on the left, the older of the two, had an incurable complaint for which no remedy was possible, while he on the right, though seemingly as ill as his fellow, was less seriously affected, and stood some chance of being saved if only he would arouse from his apathy and exert his will toward living. But nothing had as yet been found to interest him, and he seemed likely to die from sheer inanition. It is through this man’s eyes that we must observe the scene which presently took place in this quiet room.

He had been lying, as I have said, in a dreamless sleep, when something—he never knew what—made him conscious of himself and partially awake to his surroundings. He found himself listening, but there was no sound; and his eyes, which he had not unclosed for hours, slowly opened, and through the shadows which encompassed him broke a dim vision of the silent ward and the sitting figure of the weary nurse. It was an accustomed sight, and his eyes were softly re-closing when a sudden movement on the part of the nurse roused him again to something like interest, and though his apathy was yet too great for him to make a movement or utter a sound, he perceived, though with dim eyes at first, that the door at the other end of the ward had slowly opened, and that two men were advancing down the room to the place where the nurse stood waiting in evident surprise to greet them. One was the hospital doctor, and on him the sick man cast but a single glance; but the person with him was a stranger, and upon him the attention of the silent watcher became presently concentrated, for his appearance was singular and his errand one of evident mystery.

There was but one light in the room, and this was burning low, so that the impression received was general rather than particular. He saw before him a medium-sized man who sought to hide his face from observation, though this face was already sufficiently shielded by the semi-darkness and by the brim of a large hat which for some reason he had omitted to remove. Around his shoulders there hung a cloak of an old-fashioned type, and as he approached the spot where the nurse stood, his form, which had shown some dignity while he was advancing, contracted itself in such a fashion that he looked smaller than he really was.

The physician who accompanied him was the first to speak.

“Is No. Twelve asleep?” he asked.

The nurse bowed slightly, half turning her head as she did so.

The watching man was No. Thirteen, not No. Twelve, but his eyes shut at the question, perhaps because he was still overcome by his apathy, perhaps because his curiosity had been aroused and he feared to stop events by betraying his interest in them.

“I am afraid we shall have to wake him,” pursued the attendant physician. “This gentleman here, who declines to give his name, but who has brought letters which sufficiently recommend him to our regard, professes to have business with this patient which will not keep till morning. Has the patient shown any further signs of sinking?”

She answered in a cheerful tone that he had slept since ten without waking, and the two men began to approach. As they did so both turned toward the bed of the second sick man, and one of them, the stranger, remarked with something like doubt in his tones, “Is this man as low as he looks? Is he dying, too?”

The answer was a qualified one, and the stranger appeared to turn his back, but presently the strained ears of the seemingly unconscious man heard a breath panting near his own, and was conscious of some person bending over his cot. Next minute the question was whispered in his hearing:

“Are you sure this man is asleep?”

The doctor, who was standing close by, murmured an affirmative, and the nurse to whom the questioner had apparently turned, observed without any hesitation in her slightly mystified tone:

“I have not seen him move since eight o’clock; besides, if he were awake, he would show no consciousness. He is dying from sheer hopelessness, and a cannon fired at his side would not rouse him.”

The “humph” which this assurance called forth from the stranger had a peculiar sound in it, but the attention which had been directed to No. Thirteen now passed to his neighbor, and the former, feeling himself for the instant unobserved, partially opened his eyes to see how that neighbor was affected by it. A few whispered words had accomplished what a cannon had been thought unable to do, and he was beginning to realize an interest in life, or at least in what was going on in reference to his fellow patient. The words were these:

“This is a hopeless case, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long a time do you give him?”

The tone was professional, though not entirely unsympathetic.

“Dr. Sweet says a week; I say three days.”

The stranger bent over the patient, and it was at this point that the watcher’s eyes opened.

“Three days is nearer the mark,” the visitor at last declared.

At which the attending physician bowed.

“I should be glad to have a few moments’ conversation with your patient,” the stranger now pursued. “If he is unhappy, I think I can bring him comfort. He has relatives, you say.”

“Yes, a daughter, over whose helpless position he constantly grieves.”

“He is poor, then?”

“Very.”

“Good! I have pleasant news for him. Will you allow me to rouse him?”

“Certainly, if you have a communication justifying the slight shock.”

The stranger, whose head had sunk upon his breast, cast a keen look around. “I beg your pardon,” said he, “but I must speak to the man alone; he himself would choose it, but neither you nor the nurse need leave the room.”

The doctor bowed and withdrew with marked respect; the nurse lingered a moment, during which both of the sick men lay equally quiet and death-like; then she also stepped aside. The stranger was left standing between the two beds.

Soon the sensitive ears of the watchful one heard these words: “Your little daughter sends her love.”

Opening his eyes a trifle, he saw the stranger bending over the other’s pillow. A sigh which was not new to his ears rose from his dying companion, at sound of which the stranger added softly:

“You fear to leave the child, but God is merciful. He makes it possible for you to provide for her; do you want to hear how?”

A low cry, then a sudden feeble move, and No. Twelve was speaking in hurried, startled words:

“Who are you, sir? What do you want with me, and what are you saying about my child? I don’t know you.”

“No? And yet I am likely to be your greatest benefactor. But first take these few drops; they will help you to understand me. You are afraid? You need not be. I am—” He whispered a name into the sick man’s ear which his companion could not catch. “That is our secret,” he added, “and one which I charge you to preserve.”

No. Thirteen, unable to restrain his curiosity at this, stole another glance at the adjoining cot from under his scarcely lifted lids. His moribund neighbor had risen partially on his pillow and was gazing with burning intensity at the man who was leaning toward him.

“O sir,” came from the pale and working lips, as he tried to raise a feeble hand. “You mean to help my little one, you? But why should you do it? What claim has my misfortune or her innocence on you that you should concern yourself with our desperate condition?”

“No claim,” came in the stranger’s calm but impressive tones. “It is not charity I seek to bestow on you, but payment for a service you can render me. A perfectly legitimate, though somewhat unusual one,” he hastened to add, as the man’s face showed doubt.

“What—what is it?” faltered from the sick man’s lips in mingled doubt and hope. “What can a poor and wretched being, doomed to speedy death, do for a man like you? I fear you are mocking me, sir.”

“You can be the medium—” the words came slowly and with some hesitation—“for the payment of a debt I dare not liquidate in my own person. I owe someone—a large amount—of money. If I give it to you—” (he leaned closer and spoke lower, but the ears that were listening were very sharp, and not a syllable was lost) “will you give it to the person whom I will name?”

“But how? When? I am dying, they say, and——”

“Do not worry about the whens and hows. I will make all that easy. The question is, will you, for the sum of five thousand dollars, which I here show you in ten five-hundred-dollar bills, consent to sign a will, bequeathing this other little package of money to a certain young woman whom I will name?”

“Five thousand dollars? O sir, do not mislead a dying man. Five thousand dollars? Why, it would be a fortune to Lucy!”

“A fortune that she shall have,” the other assured him.

“Just for signing my name?”

“Just for signing your name to a will which will bequeath the rest of your belongings, namely, this little package, to an equally young and equally unfortunate girl.”

“It seems right. I do not see anything wrong in it,” murmured the dying father in a voice that had strangely strengthened. “Will you assure me that it is all right, and that no one will suffer by my action?”

“Did I not tell you who I was?” asked the stranger, “and cannot you trust one of my reputation? You will be doing a good act, a retributive act; one that will have the blessing of Providence upon it.”

“But why this secrecy? Why do you come to me instead of paying the debt yourself? Is she——”

“She is who she is,” was the somewhat stern interruption. “You do not know her; no one here knows her. Will you do what I ask or must I turn to your companion who seems as ill as yourself?”

“I—I want to do it, sir. Five thousand dollars! Let me feel of the bills that represent so much.”

There was a movement, and the sick and feeble voice rose again in a tone of ecstatic delight. “And I need not worry any more about her feet without shoes and her pretty head without shelter. She will be a lady and go to school, and by and by can learn a trade and live respectably. Oh, thank God, sir! I know who I would like to have made her guardian.”

“Then you consent?” cried the stranger, with a thrill of some strong feeling in his voice.

“I do, sir, and thank you; only you must be quick, for there is no knowing how soon the end may come.” The stranger, who seemed to be equally apprehensive of the results of this strong excitement, raised himself upright and motioned to the doctor and the nurse.

“You will say nothing of our compact,” he enjoined in a final whisper, as the two summoned ones approached. “Nor will you express surprise at the wording of the will or, indeed, at anything I may say.”

“No,” came in an almost undistinguishable murmur, and then there was silence, till the doctor and the nurse were within hearing, when the stranger said:

“Our friend here has a small matter of business on his mind. It has been my pleasure, as I perhaps intimated to you, to bring him a considerable sum of money which he had quite despaired of ever having paid him; and as for reasons he is not willing to communicate, he desires to bequeath a portion of it to a person not related to him, he naturally finds it necessary to leave a will. Foreseeing this, I had the draft of one drawn up, which, if agreeable to you, I will read to him in your presence.”

The amazement in the nurse’s eye gave way to a look of deference, and she bowed slightly. The doctor nodded his head, and both took their stand at the foot of the small cot. The man in the adjoining bed neither murmured nor moved. Had they looked at him, they would have doubtless thought his sleep was doing him but little good, for his pallor had increased and an icy sweat glistened on his forehead.

“Mr. Hazlitt’s property,” continued the stranger in a low and mechanical tone, “consists entirely of money. Is that not so?” he asked, smiling upon the dazed but yet strangely happy face of the patient lying before him. “Namely, this roll of bills, amounting as you see to five thousand dollars, and this small package of banknotes, of which the amount is not stated, but of whose value he is probably aware. Are you willing,” and he turned to the doctor, “to take charge of these valuables, and see that they are forthcoming at the proper time?”

The doctor bowed, glanced at his patient, and meeting his eager eye, took the roll of bills and the package, and putting them into his breast pocket, remarked, “I will have them placed in the safe deposit vaults to-morrow.”

“Very well,” cried the stranger; “that will be all right, will it not?” he asked, consulting in his turn the man before him.

Mr. Hazlitt, as they called him, gave him a short look, smiled again, and said: “You know best; anything, so that my Lucy gets her five thousand.”

The stranger, straightening himself, asked if he could not have more light, at which the nurse brought a candle. Immediately the stranger took a paper from under his cloak and opened it. The nurse held the candle and the stranger began to read:

The last will and testament of Abram Hazlitt of Chicago, Cook county, Illinois.

First: I direct all my just debts and funeral expenses to be paid.

Second: I give, devise, and bequeath to——

“Is your daughter’s name Lucy, and is the sum you wish given her five thousand dollars exact?” asked the stranger, sitting down at the small table near by and taking out a pen from his pocket.

“Yes,” was the feeble response, “five thousand dollars to Lucy Ellen, my only and much-beloved child.”

The stranger rapidly wrote in the words, adding, “she lives in Chicago, I suppose.”

It was the nurse who answered:

“She is in this hospital, too, sir; but not for any mortal complaint. Time and care will restore her.”

The stranger went on reading:

I give, devise, and bequeath to my only and much-loved child, Lucy Ellen of Chicago, Cook county, Illinois, the sum of five thousand dollars.

Second: I give, devise, and bequeath to——

“Did you say the name was Mary Earle, and that she lived in Hamilton, —— county, Massachusetts?” he interjected, looking inquiringly at the man whose sagacity he thus trusted.

“Yes, yes,” was the hurried, almost faint answer. “You know, you know; go on quickly, for I’m feeling very weak.”

They gave him stimulants, while the stranger rapidly wrote in certain words, which he as rapidly read in what one listener thought to be a much relieved tone.

I give, devise, and bequeath to Mary Earle of Hamilton, —— county, Massachusetts, all my remaining property as found in the package of banknotes deposited in the safe deposit vaults of this city, in payment of an old debt to her father, and as an expression of my regret that my hitherto destitute circumstances have prevented me from sooner recognizing her claims upon me.

Third: I appoint Dr. Cusack of the Chicago General Hospital sole executor of this, my last will and testament.

Witness my hand this thirteenth day of April in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-two.

Signed, published, and declared

by the testator to be

his last will and testament, in

our presence, who at his request

and in his presence and

in the presence of each other

have subscribed our names

hereto as witnesses on this

thirteenth day of April, 1892.

“Does this paper express your wishes and all your wishes?” asked the stranger pausing. “Is there any change you would like made or is the will as it stands right?”

“Right! right!” came in more feeble tones from the fast sinking sufferer.

“Then if you will call in another witness, I will submit the paper to him to sign,” said the stranger turning toward the doctor. “As executor you cannot act as witness.”

The doctor turned to the nurse and a momentary consultation passed between them. Then she quietly withdrew, and in a few minutes returned with a man who from his appearance evidently occupied some such position as watchman. The sick man was raised higher in his bed and a pen put in his hand.

“Mr. Hazlitt is about to sign his will,” explained the stranger; and turning to the sick man, he put the formal question: “Is this paper which I here place before you, your last will and testament? And do you accept these two persons now before you as witnesses to your signing of the same?”

A feeble assent followed both these questions, whereupon the stranger put his finger on the place where the dying man was expected to write his name. As he did so a strange sensation seemed to affect every one present, for the men with an involuntary movement all raised their eyes to the ceiling upon which the stooping form of the stranger made such a weird shadow, while the nurse gave evident signs of momentary perturbation, which she as a woman of many experiences would doubtless have found it hard to explain even to herself.

A short silence followed, which was presently broken by the scratching of a pen. The patient was writing his name, but how slowly! He seemed to be minutes in doing it. Suddenly he fell back, a smile of perfect peace lighting up his shrunken features.

“Lucy’s future is assured,” he murmured, and lost or seemed to lose all connection with the scene in which he had just played such an important part.

A deep sigh answered him. Whose? It had the sound of relief in it, a great soul-satisfying relief. Had the stranger uttered it? It would seem so, but his manner was too professional to be the cloak of so much emotion, or so it seemed to all eyes but one.

The witnesses’ signatures were soon in place, and the stranger rose to go. As he did so his eyes flashed suddenly over his shoulder and rested for an instant on the man who occupied the neighboring cot. The movement was so quick that No. Thirteen had scarcely time to close his eyes undetected. Indeed, some glint of the half-hidden eyeball must have met the stranger’s eye, for he turned quickly and bent over the seemingly unconscious man with a gaze of such intentness that it took all the strength of what had once been called a most obstinate will for the man thus surveyed not to respond to it.

Suddenly the stranger thrust his hand out and laid it on the unknown sufferer’s heart, and a slight smile crossed his features.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” were the words he dropped, cold and stinging, into the apparently deaf ear.

But the man’s will was indomitable and an icy silence was the sole answer which the intruder received.

“I have still a thousand to give away,” was whispered so close into his face that he felt the hot breath that conveyed it.

But even these words fell, or seemed to fall, upon ears of stony deafness, and the stranger rising, moved quietly away, saying as he did so, “This case here is on the mend. His heart has a very normal beat.”

Some few more words were said, and he and his companion were left alone again with the nurse.

At three o’clock No. Twelve called feebly for some water; as the nurse returned from giving it to him she felt her dress pulled slightly by a feeble hand. Turning to No. Thirteen she was astonished to see that his eyes were burning with quite an eager light.

“I could drink some broth,” said he.

“Why, you are better!” she cried.

But he shook his head. “No,” said he, “but—” The voice trailed off into a feeble murmur, but the eye continued bright. He was afraid to speak for fear his lips would frame aloud the words that he had been repeating to himself for the last two hours. “Mary Earle! Mary Earle, of Hamilton, —— county, Massachusetts.”

He had found the interest which had been lacking to his recovery.

PART II.

THE MAN WITH THE DOG.

II.
HADLEY’S CAVE.

ON the first day of June, 1892, there could be seen on the highway near the small village of Hamilton, a dusty wanderer with a long beard and rough, unkempt hair. From the silver streaks in the latter, and from his general appearance and feeble walk, he had already passed the virile point of life and had entered upon, or was about to enter upon, the stage of decrepitude. And yet the eyes which burned beneath the gray and shaggy brows were strangely bright, and had an alertness of expression which contradicted the weary bend of the head and the slow dragging of the rough-shod feet.

His dress was that of a farm laborer, and from the smallness of the bundle which he carried on a stick over his shoulder, he had evidently been out of work for some time and was as poor as he was old and helpless.

At the junction of the two roads leading to Leadington and Wells, he stopped and drew a long breath. Then he sat down on a huge stone in the cross of the roads and, drooping his head, gazed long and earnestly at the length of dusty road which separated him from the cluster of steeples and house roofs before him. Was he dreaming or planning, or was he merely weary? A sound at his side startled him. Turning his head, he saw a dog. It was a very lean one, and its attitude as it stood gazing into his face with wistful eyes, was one of entreaty.

“Come!” it seemed to say, and ran off a few steps. The tramp, for we can call him nothing else, though there was a dash of something like refinement in his look and manner, stared for a moment after the animal, then he slowly rose. But he did not follow the dog. The disappointment of the latter was evident. Coming back to the man, he sniffed and pulled at his clothes, and cast such beseeching looks upward out of his all but human eyes that the man though naturally surly was touched at last and turned in the direction indicated by the dog.

“After all, why not?” he murmured, and strolled on after his now delighted guide, up one of the roads to a meadow terminating in an abrupt and rocky steep.

“Why am I such a fool?” he asked himself when half way across this stubbly field. But at the short bark of the dog and the irresistible wagging of the animal’s tail, he stumbled on, influenced no doubt by some superstitious feeling which bade him regard the summons of this unusually sagacious beast as an omen he dared not disregard. At the foot of the rocks he, however, paused. Why should he climb them at the bidding of a dog? But his guide was imperative, and pulled at his trousers so energetically that he finally mounted a short distance, when to his surprise he came upon a cave into the entrance of which the dog plunged with a short sharp cry of pleasure and satisfaction.

Hesitating to follow, the man stood for a moment gazing back upon the town and the stretch of lovely landscape before him. It was an outlook of great charm, but I doubt if he noticed its beauties. Some thought of an unpleasant and perplexing nature furrowed his brow, and it was with a start that he turned, when the dog, reissuing from the cave, renewed his blandishments, and by dint of bark and whine attempted to draw him into the opening before which he stood.

What was in hiding there? Curiosity bade him look, but a certain not unreasonable apprehension deterred him. He finally, however, overcame his fear, if fear it was, and followed the dog, that no sooner saw him start toward the entrance than he gave a leap of delight and bounded into the cave before him. In another moment the man had entered also and was looking around for the helpless or wounded human being whom he evidently expected to find.

But no such sight met his eyes. On the contrary, he saw nothing but an empty cave with here and there a sign of the place having been used as a domicile at a recent date. In one corner was a litter of boughs from which the covering had manifestly been roughly torn, and in the ledges overhead were to be seen spikes of wood, upon which utensils had doubtless been hung, for amid the débris of broken rock beneath lay an old tin pan with the handle broken off.

As there was nothing in this to interest the man he turned and kicked at the inoffensive beast who had lured him out of his path on such a fruitless errand. But the latter instead of resenting this harshness only renewed his previous antics, and finally succeeding by them in re-attracting the man’s attention, led the way to a remote corner of the cave, where the shadows were thickest. Here he stood with his paws raised against the rocky sides, looking up over his head and then back at the man in a way which left no doubt as to his meaning.

He wanted the man to climb, and when the man approaching saw the few rocky steps that had been hewn out of the wall, his curiosity was renewed and he lent himself to the effort, old as he was and tired with many a long hour of tramping in the summer sun.

Above him he perceived a dark hole, and into this he presently thrust his head, but the darkness which he encountered was so impenetrable that he would have instantly retreated had he not remembered the box of matches which kept guard with an old pipe in a certain pocket of his red flannel shirt. Taking out this box, he struck a match and, as soon as the first dazzling flash was over, perceived that he was in a small but well furnished room, stocked with provisions and containing many articles of domestic use. This so surprised him that he withdrew in some haste, though he would dearly have liked to have made some investigation into the old chest of drawers he saw there, and had one peep at least into the odd, long box which took up so much of the darkened space into which he had intruded.

The dog was waiting for him below and at his reappearance leaped and bounded with delight, and then lay down on the floor of the cave with such an inviting wriggle of the tail that the man understood him at last. It was a lodging that the dog offered him, a lodging which had been occupied by a former master, and which the faithful creature still watched over and hungered in, as his appearance amply showed. The man, to whom a human being might have appealed in vain, was grimly touched by this benevolent action on the part of a dog, and stooping quickly, he gave him a short caress, after which he rose and stood hesitating for a moment, casting short glances behind him.

But the temptation, if it was such, to remain, did not hold him long, for presently he motioned to the dog to follow him, and issuing from the cave, began his weary tramp toward the town. The dog, with fallen tail and drooping head, trotted slowly after him. And this was the first adventure which met this man in the little town of Hamilton.

III.
THE YOUNG HEIRESS.

THAT night five men sat on the porch of the one tavern in Hamilton. Of these, one was the landlord, a spare, caustic New Englander who understood his business and left it to his wife to do the agreeable. Of the remaining four, two were the inevitable loungers to be found around all such places at nightfall, and the other two, wayfarers who had taken up lodgings for the night. The dog lying contentedly at the feet of one of these latter tells us who he was.

The talk was on local subjects and included more or less gossip. Who had started it? No one knew; but the least interested person in the group was apparently the man with the dog. He sat and smoked, because it was the hour for sitting and smoking, but he neither talked nor listened,—that is, to all appearance—and when he laughed, as he occasionally did, it was more at some unexpected antic on the part of the dog than at anything which was said in his hearing. But he was old and nobody wondered.

The last subject under discussion was the engagement of a certain young lady to a New York medical student. “Which means, I take it, that Dr. Izard will not continue to have full swing here,” observed one of the stragglers. “Folks say as how her people won’t hear of her leaving home. So he’ll have to come to Hamilton.”

“I sha’n’t lend him my old body to experiment on, if he does,” spoke up the surly landlord. “Dr. Izard is good enough for me.”

“And for me. But the women folks want a change, they say. The doctor is so everlasting queer; and then he’s away so much.”

“That’s because he is so skilful that even the big bugs in Boston and New York too, I hear, want his opinion on their cases. He’s not to blame for that. Great honor, I say, not only to him but to all the town.”

“Great honor, no doubt, but mighty inconvenient. Why, when my wife’s sister was took the other night I run all the way from my house to the doctor’s only to find the door closed and that everlasting placard up at the side: ‘Gone out of town.’ I say it’s a shame, I do, and no other doctor to be found within five miles.”

“You ought to live in Boston. There they have doctors enough.”

“Yet they send for ours.”

“Do you know,” another voice spoke up, “that I had rather go sick till morning, or have one of my folk’s sick, than take that road up by the churchyard after ten o’clock at night. I think it’s the gloomiest, most God-forsaken spot I ever struck in all my life. To think of a doctor living next door to a graveyard. It’s a trifle too suggestive, I say.”

“I wouldn’t care about that if he wasn’t so like a graveyard himself. I declare his look is like a hollow vault. If he wasn’t so smart I’d ’a’ sent for the Wells doctor long ago. I hate long white faces, myself, no matter how handsome they are, and when he touches me with that slender cold hand of his, the shivers go all over me so that he thinks I am struck with a chill. And so I am, but not with a natural one, I vow. If we lived in the olden times and such a man dared come around the death-beds of honest people such as live in this town, he’d have been burnt as a wizard.”

“Come, I won’t hear such talk about a neighbor, let alone a man who has more than once saved the lives of all of us. He’s queer; but who isn’t queer? He lives alone, and cooks and sleeps and doctors all in one room, like the miser he undoubtedly is, and won’t have anything to do with chick or child or man or woman who is not sick, unless you except the village’s protégée, Polly Earle, whom everybody notices and does for. But all this does not make him wicked or dangerous or uncanny even. That is, to those who used to know him when he was young.”

“And did you?”

“Wa’al, I guess I did, and a handsomer man never walked Boston streets, let alone the lanes of this poor village. They used to say in those days that he thought of marrying, but he changed his mind for some reason, and afterward grew into the kind of man you see. Good cause, I’ve no doubt, for it. Men like him don’t shut themselves up in a cage for nothing.”

“But——”

“Don’t let us talk any more about the doctor,” cried the lodger who did not have a dog. “You spoke of a little girl whom everybody does for. Why is that? The topic ought to be interesting.”

The landlord, who had talked more than his wont, frowned and filled his pipe, which had gone out. “Ask them fellers,” he growled; “or get my wife into a corner and ask her. She likes to spin long stories; I don’t.”

“Oh, I don’t care about asking anybody,” mumbled the stranger, who was a sallow-faced drummer with a weak eye and a sensual mouth. “I only thought——”

“She isn’t for any such as you, if that’s what you mean,” volunteered the straggler, taking up the burden of the talk. “She has been looked after by the village because her case was a hard one. She was an only child, and when she was but four her mother died, after a long and curious illness which no one understood, and three days after, her father—” The dog yelped. As no one was near him but his master, he must have been hurt by that master, but how, it was impossible to understand, for neither had appeared to move.

“Well, well,” cried the sallow young man, “her father——”

“Disappeared. He was last seen at his wife’s funeral; the next day he was not to be found anywhere. That was fourteen years ago, and we know no more now than then what became of him.”

“And the child?”

“Was left without a soul to look after it. But the whole village has taken her in charge and she has never suffered. She has even been educated,—some say by Dr. Izard, but for this I won’t vouch, for he is a perfect miser in his way of living, and I don’t think he would trouble himself to help anybody, even a poor motherless child.”

“Well, if he has spent a penny for her in the past, I don’t think he will be called upon to spend any in the future. I heard yesterday that she has come into a pretty property, and that, too, in a very suspicious way.”

“What’s that? You have? Why didn’t you tell us so before? When a man has news, I say he ought to impart it, and that without any ifs and ands.”

“Well, I thought it would keep,” drawled the speaker, drawing back with an air of importance as all the habitués of the place pressed upon him, and even Mrs. Husted, the landlady, stepped out of her sitting-room to listen.

“Wa’al, it won’t,” snarled the landlord. “News, like baked potatoes, must be eaten hot. Where did you hear this about Polly Earle, and what do you mean by suspicious?”

“I mean that this money, and they do say it’s a pretty sum, came to her by will, and that the man who left it was a perfect stranger to her, someone she never heard of before, of that I’ll be bound. He said in his will that he left all this money in payment of an old debt to her father, but that’s all bosh. Ephraim Earle got all the money that was owing to him two weeks before he vanished out of this town, and I say——”

“No matter what you say,” broke in the crabbed landlord. “She’s had money left her, and now she’ll get a good husband, and make a show in the village. I’m glad on it, for one. She’s sung and danced and made merry on nothing long enough. Let her try a little responsibility now, and return some of the favors she has received.”

“Did you hear how much money it was?” timidly asked an old man who had just joined the group.

“It was just the same amount as was paid Ephraim Earle for his invention a few days before we saw the last of him.”

“Lord-a-mercy!”

“And which——”

“Now this is too interesting for anything,” exclaimed a female voice from a window overhead. “Twenty thousand dollars, really? What a romance. I must run and see Polly this minute.”

“Stop her!” came in guttural command from the landlord to his wife.

“And why should I stop her?” asked that good woman, with a jolly roll of her head. “Instead of stopping her, I think I will go with her. But do let us hear more about it first. What was the name of the man who left her this splendid fortune?”

“Abram Hazlitt. Somebody who lived out west.”

From the looks that flew from one to the other and from the doubtful shakes of the head visible on every side, this was, as the speaker had declared, an utterly unknown name. The interest became intense.

“I always thought there was something wrong about Ephraim’s disappearance. No man as good as he would have left a child like that of his own free will.”

“What! do you think this man Hazlitt had anything to do——”

“Hush, hush.”

The monition came from more than one pair of lips; and even the man with the dog looked up. A young lady was coming down the street.

“There she is now.”

“She’s coming here.”

“No; more likely she’s on her way to tell the doctor of her good luck.”

“Look, she has the same old smile.”

“And the same dress.”

“Wa’al she’s pretty, anyhow.”

“And such a sunbeam!”

Yelp! went the dog again. His master had trod on his tail for the second time. Meanwhile the cause of all this excitement had reached the walk in front of the house. Though she was tripping along in a merry fashion which was all her own, she stopped as she met Mrs. Husted’s eye, and, calling her down, whispered something in her ear. Then with a backward nod the young girl passed on, and everyone drew a long breath. There was something so satisfactory to them all in her ingenuous manner and simple expression of youthful delight.

She was a slight girl, and to those who had seen her every day for the last dozen years she was simply prettier than usual, but to the two or three strangers observing her she was a vision of madcap beauty that for the moment made every other woman previously seen forgotten. Her face, which was heart-shaped and fresh as a newly-opened rose, was flushed with laughter, and the dimples which came and went with every breath so distracted the eye that it was not till she had turned her lovely countenance aside that one remembered the violet hues in her heavily-lashed eyes and the hints of feeling which emanated from them. That, with all the dignities of her new-born heirship upon her, she swung a white sunbonnet on her delicate forefinger was characteristic of the girl. The hair thus revealed to sight was of a glistening chestnut, whose somewhat rumpled curls were deliciously in keeping with the saucy poise of the unquiet head. Altogether a decided gleam of sunshine, made all the more conspicuously bright from the hints just given of the tragic history of her parents and the shadows surrounding the very gift which had called up all this pleasure into her face.

“What did she say?” whispered more than one voice as the landlady came slowly back.

“She invited me to visit her, and hinted that she had something to tell me,” was the somewhat important reply.

“And when are you going?” asked one more eager than the rest.

“I may go back with her when she returns from Dr. Izard’s,” was the cool and consequential response. Evidently the landlady had been raised in her own estimation by the notice given her by this former little waif.

“I wonder,” someone now ventured, “if she is going to buy the big house over the doctor’s office. I noticed that the windows were open to-day.”

“Pshaw, and her father’s house lying idle?”

“Her father’s house! Good gracious, would you have the child go there?”

“You make the chills run over me.”

“Nobody would go into that house with her. It hasn’t been opened in fourteen years.”

“The more shame,” growled the landlord.

“She’ll never have anything to do with that. I’ve seen her run by it myself, as if the very shadow it cast was terrifying to her.”

“Yet folks thought it was a cozy home when Ephraim took his young wife there. I remember, myself, the brass andirons in the parlor and the long row of books in the big hall upstairs. To think that those books have never been opened these fourteen years, nor the floors trod on, nor the curtains drawn back! I declare, it’s the most creepy thing of the whole affair.”

“And how do you know that the floor hasn’t been walked on, nor the curtains drawn, since we took the child out from her desolate corner in the old bed-room upstairs?” suggested another voice in an odd, mysterious tone.

“Because the doors were locked and the keys put where no one in the town could get at ’em. We thought it best; there was death on the walls everywhere, and the child had no money to be brought up in any such a grand way as that.”

“Folks as I mean don’t need keys,” murmured the other under his breath. But the suggestion, if it were such, was immediately laughed down.

“You’re a fool, Jacob; we’re in the nineteenth century now, the era of electric lights and trolley cars.”

“I know; I know; but I’ve seen more than once on a dark night the shifting of a light behind those drawn curtains, and once——”

But the laughter was against him and he desisted, and another man spoke up—the lodger with the sallow face: “Why didn’t they sell the old place if the child was left as poor as you say?”

“Why, man, its owner might be living. Ephraim Earle only disappeared, you know, and might have returned any day. Leastwise that is what we thought then. Now, we no longer expect it. I wonder who’ll act as her guardian.”

“She’s of age; she don’t need no guardian.”

“Well, it’s a precious mystery, the whole thing. I wonder if the police won’t see something in it?”

“Bah, police! They had the chance at the thing fourteen years ago. And what did they do with it? Nothing.”

“But now there’s a clue. This man Hazlitt knew what became of Ephraim Earle, or why did he leave that very same amount to his daughter?”

“Lor’ knows. She’s a taking minx and perhaps——”

“Well, perhaps——”

“Hazlitt wasn’t his name, don’t you see?”

This new theory started fresh talk and much excited reasoning, but as it was of the most ignorant sort, it is scarcely worth our while to record it. Meanwhile the twilight gave way to darkness and Polly Earle failed to reappear. When it was quite dark, the stragglers separated, and then it was seen that the man with the dog had fallen asleep in his chair.

Someone strove to wake him.

“Come, come, friend,” said he; “you’ll be getting the rheumatiz if you don’t look out. This isn’t the right kind of air to sleep in.”

The old wayfarer yawned, opened his strange, uneasy eyes, and hobbling to his feet looked lazily up and down the street.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Nine o’clock,” shouted someone.

“Give me a drink, then, and I and my dog will take a walk.” And he drew out a worn wallet, from which he drew a dime, which he handed in through the open window to the now busy landlord.

“Hot,” he croaked, “I’ve got chilly sitting out here in the dew.”

The glass was handed him, and he drank it off with the ease of an accustomed hand.

“I’ll be back before you lock up,” said he, and stepped down into the street, followed by the dog.

“Seems to me I’ve seen that dog before,” remarked someone.

“Why, don’t you know him? That’s old Piper, the dead hermit’s dog. I wonder how this fellow got hold of him.”

IV.
DR. IZARD.

THE tramp, who was, as you have seen, not without some small means to make himself respected, paused for a moment in front of the tavern before deciding what direction he would take. Then he went east, or, to make matters clearer to my reader, followed the direction young Polly Earle had taken an hour or so before.

Being bent and old he walked slowly, but as the tavern from which he had emerged was near the end of the street, it was not long before he came upon the big church at the corner, beyond which was the open country and circling highroad.

“They spoke of a graveyard,” murmured he, pausing and gazing about him with eyes which seemed to have lost none of their penetration, however bent his figure or aged his face. “Ah! I think I see it!” And he rambled on in the darkness till he came to a picket fence. But this fence enclosed a dwelling-house, whose large and imposing bulk rose in deepest shadow beyond him, and he had to walk several rods farther before he came to the spot of glimmering headstones and drooping willows. A faint moon lent a ghostly light to the place, and as he stopped and bent his head over the intervening wall, weird glimpses were given him of snowy shafts and rounded hillocks, which may have accounted for the length of time he clung there without movement or sound.

But finally the dog whining at his heels, or the gleam of a light shining in the distance, recalled him to himself, and he moved, taking the direction of that light, though it led him over the cemetery wall and across such of the graves as lay along the border of the yard adjoining the large house of which I have previously spoken. The dog, who had not left him a moment since he joined him at the cave, shrank as he climbed the wall, and the old man took his course alone, treading as softly as he could, but yet making some noise as a broken twig snapped under his foot or he pressed down some tiny aspiring bush in his rude advance.

He was making for the light which shone from the window near the ground in the huge side of the great and otherwise unilluminated house he had passed a few minutes before. He had expected to be met by a fence like the one in front, but to his surprise he soon saw that the graveyard pressed close up to the house, and that there was a monument not ten yards from the very window he was approaching. He had paused at this monument, and was vainly trying to read the inscription which was cut deeply into the side turned toward the moon, when he heard a sudden sound, and, looking toward the house, saw that a door had opened in the blank side of the wall, and that the light had shifted from the window to this open square, where it was held high above the head of a remarkable looking man who was looking directly his way.

Convinced that this was Dr. Izard, he held his breath, and slunk as much into the shadow of the shaft as possible. Meanwhile he stared at the picture presented to his notice, and noted every outline of the noble head and small but finely proportioned form, that filled the illuminated gap before him. The face he could not see, but the attitude was eloquent, and conveyed so vividly an expression of strained listening and agitated doubt, that this by no means careless observer felt that his step had been heard, and that something more than common curiosity had drawn the doctor to the spot.

A sudden sense of his position among the graves, or the chill imparted by his close contact with the stone shaft against which he had flung himself, made the aged wanderer shiver, but his emotion, however occasioned, did not last long, for with a sigh that could be plainly heard across the short space, Dr. Izard withdrew his head and closed the door, leaving nothing to be seen in the dim blackness of the houseside but the one square of light which had previously attracted the stranger’s attention.

With careful step and bated breath, the latter left the tomb by which he had sought refuge, and advanced to this same wall, along which he crept till he reached this uncurtained window. A glimpse of the interior was what he wanted, but, as he stopped to listen, he found that he was likely to obtain more than this, for plainly to be heard in the almost death-like quiet, came the sound of two voices conversing, and he knew, perhaps by instinct, perhaps by ready reasoning, that they were the voices of the doctor and the pretty new heiress, Polly Earle.

To listen might have been a temptation to any man, but to this one it was almost a necessity. His first desire, however, was to see what was before him, and so, with more skill than one would expect, he bent a branch of the vine swaying about him, and, from behind its cover, peered into the shining panes that opened so invitingly beside him.

The first thing he saw was the room with its shelves upon shelves of books, piled high to the ceiling. As it answered the triple purpose of doctor’s office, student’s study, and a misanthrope’s cell, it naturally presented an anomalous appearance, which was anything but attractive at first sight. Afterward, certain details stood out, and it became apparent that those curious dangling things which disfigured the upper portion of the room belonged entirely to the medical side of the occupant’s calling, while the mixture of articles on the walls, some beautiful, but many of them grotesque if not repellant, bespoke the man of taste whose nature has been warped by solitude. A large door painted green filled up a considerable space of the wall on the left, but judging from the two heavy bars padlocked across it, it no longer served as a means of communication with the other parts of the house. On the contrary it had been fitted from top to bottom with shelves, upon which were ranged a doctor’s usual collection of phials, boxes, and surgical appliances, with here and there a Chinese image or an Indian god. A rude settle showed where he slept at night, and on the table in the middle of the room, a most incongruous litter of books, trinkets, medicines, clothing, sewing materials, and chemical apparatus proclaimed the fact, well known in the village, that no woman ever set foot in the place, save such as came for medical advice or on some such errand as had drawn hither the pretty Polly.

At the table and in full view of the peering intruder sat the genius of the place, Dr. Izard. His back was to the window and he was looking up at Polly, who stood near, twirling as usual her sunbonnet round her dainty forefinger. It was his profile, therefore, which the curious wayfarer saw, but this profile was so fine and yet so characteristic that it immediately imprinted itself upon the memory like a silhouette and the observer felt that he had known it always. Yet it was not till one had been acquainted with the doctor long that all the traits of his extraordinary countenance became apparent. Its intelligence, its sadness, its reserve and the beauty which gave to all these qualities a strange charm which was rather awe-inspiring than pleasurable, struck the mind at once, but it was not till after months of intercourse that one saw that the spell he invariably created about him was not due to these obvious qualities but to something more subtle and enigmatic, something which flashed out in his face at odd times or fell from his voice under the strain of some unusual emotion, which while it neither satisfied the eye nor the ear, created such a halo of individuality about the man that dread became terror or admiration became worship according to the mental bias of the person observant of him.

In age he was nearer fifty than forty, and in color dark rather than light. But no one ever spoke of him as young or old, light or dark. He was simply Dr. Izard, the pride and the dread of the village, the central point of its intellectual life, on whose eccentricities judgment was suspended because through him fame had come to the village and its humble name been carried far and wide.

Polly, who feared nobody, but who had for this man, as her rather unwilling benefactor, a wholesome respect, was looking down when the stranger first saw her. The smile which was never long absent from her lips lingered yet in the depths of the dimple that was turned toward the doctor, but the rest of her face showed emotion and a hint of seriousness which was by no means unbecoming to her poetic features.

“You are very good,” she was saying. “I have often wondered why you were so good to such a little flyaway as I am. But I shall surely remember all you have said and follow your advice as nearly as possible.”

There was unexpected coldness in the doctor’s reply:

“I have advised nothing but what any friend of yours must subscribe to. The woman with whom you are staying is a good woman, but the home she can give you is no longer suitable for a girl who has come, as you say you have, into possession of considerable property. You must find another; and since the house over our heads is a good one, I have ventured to offer it to you for a sum which your man of business certainly will not regard as high, considering its advantages of size and location.”

“By location do you mean its close proximity to the graveyard?” she inquired, with a naïve inclination of her coquettish head. “I should say, myself, though I never fear anything, that its location is against it.”

His eye, which had wandered from hers, came back with a stern intentness.

“Since I have lived here for twenty years with no other outlook than the graves you see, I cannot be said to be a good judge of the matter. To me the spot has become a necessity, and if you should make the arrangement I suggest, it must be with the understanding that this room is to be reserved for my use as long as I live, for I could never draw a free breath elsewhere.”

“Nor would anyone wish you to,” said she. “This solitary room, with its dangling skulls and queer old images, its secrecy and darkness, and the graves pressing up almost to your window, seems a part of Dr. Izard. I could not imagine you in a trim office with a gig at the door and a man to drive it. No, it would rob us of half our faith in you, to see you enjoying life like other folks. You must stay here if only because my mother, lying over there in her solitary grave, would be lonely were your face to fail to appear every night and morning in your open doorway.”

Her hand, which had paused in its restless action, pointed over her shoulder to the silent yard without. The physician’s eye followed it, and the words of reproof died upon his tongue.

“You think me frivolous,” she cried. “Well, so I am, at times. But you make me think; and if this sudden accession to fortune fills me with excitement and delight, the sight of you sitting here, and the nearness of my mother’s tomb, gives me some sober thoughts too, and—and—Dr. Izard, will you tell me one thing? Why do people stare when they hear the exact amount of the money left me? It is not because it is so large; for some say it is anything but a large fortune. Is it—” she hesitated a little, probably because it was always hard to talk to Dr. Izard—“for the reason that it is so near the sum my father was said to have carried away with him, when he left me so suddenly?”

The wind was fluttering the vines, and the doctor turned his head to look that way. When he glanced back he answered quietly, but with no irritation in his voice:

“It is hard to tell what causes the stare of ignorant people. What was the amount which has been left you? I do not think you have mentioned the exact figure.”

“Twenty thousand dollars,” she whispered. “Isn’t it splendid,—a lordly fortune, for such a poor girl as I am?”

“Yes,” he acquiesced, “yes.” But he seemed struck just as others had been who heard it.

“And was not that just what was paid papa by the French government just before mamma died?”

“I have heard it so said,” was the short reply.

“And don’t you know?” she asked.