the way that thunderbolt had been quietly
prepared for him and launched, without warning, in
his very daughter's presence, and the result
just communicated to Julia Dodd.

In a very gloomy mood he followed his son,
and heard his firm though elastic tread on the
frosty ground, and saw how loftily he carried his
head: and from that moment feared, and very
very, nearly hated him.

The next day he feigned sick, and sent for
Osmond. That worthy prescribed a pill and a
draught, the former laxative, the latter astringent.
This ceremony performed, Mr. Hardie
gossiped with him; and, after a détour or two
glided to his real anxiety. "Sampson tells me
you know more about Captain Dodd's case
than he does: he is not very clear as to the
cause of the poor man's going mad."

"The cause? Why Apoplexy."

"Yes, but I mean what caused the
apoplexy?"

Mr. Osmond replied that Apoplexy was often
idiopathic.* Captain Dodd, as he understood,
had fallen down in the street in a sudden fit:
"but as for the mania, that is to be attributed to
an insufficient evacuation of blood while under
the apoplectic coma."
* "Arising of itself." A term rather hastily
applied to disorders the coming signs of which
have not been detected by the medical attendant.
The birth of Topsy was idiopathic—in that learned
lady's opinion.

"Not bled enough! Why Sampson says it
is because he was bled too much."

Osmond was amused at this; and repeated
that the mania came of not being bled enough.

The discussion was turned into an unexpected
quarter by the entrance of Jane Hardie, who
came timidly in and said, "Oh, Mr. Osmond, I
cannot let you go without telling you how
anxious I am about Alfred. He is so thin, and
pale, and depressed."

"Nonsense, Jane," said Mr. Hardie; "have
we not all cause to be dejected in this house?"
But she persisted gently that there was more
in it than that: and his headaches were worse:
and she could not be easy any longer without
advice.

"Ah, those headaches," said Mr. Osmond,
"they always made me uneasy. To tell the
truth, Miss Hardie, I have noticed a remarkable
change in him, but I did not like to excite
apprehensions: and so he mopes, does he?
seeks solitude, and is taciturn, and dejected?"

"Yes. But I do not mind that so much as
his turning so pale and thin."

"Oh, it is all part of one malady."

"Then you know what is the matter?"

"I think I do: and yours is a wise and timely
anxiety. Your brother's is a very delicate case
of a hyperæsthetic character; and I should like
to have the advice of a profound physician.
Let me see, Dr. Wycherley will be with me
tomorrow: may I bring him over as a friend?"

This proposal did not at all suit Mr. Hardie;
he put his own construction on Alfred's pallor
and dejection, and was uneasy at the idea of his
being cross-questioned by a couple of doctors:

"No, no," said he, "Taff has fancies enough
already; I cannot have you gentlemen coming
here to fill his head with many more."

"Oh, he has fancies, has he?" said Osmond,
keenly. "My dear sir, we shall not say one word
to him: that might irritate him: but I should like
you to hear a truly learned opinion."

Jane looked so imploringly, that Mr. Hardie
yielded a reluctant assent, on those terms.

So the next day, by appointment, Mr.
Osmond introduced his friend Dr. Wycherley:
bland and bald, with a fine head, and a face
naturally intelligent, but crossed every now and
then by gleams of vacancy; a man of large reading,
and of tact to make it subserve his interests.
A voluminous writer on certain medical subjects,
he had so saturated himself with circumlocution,
that it distilled from his very tongue: he talked
like an Article; a quarterly one; and so gained
two advantages: 1st, he rarely irritated a fellow-
creature; for, if he began a sentence hot, what
with its length, and what with its windiness, he
was apt to end it cool: item stabs by
polysyllables are pricks by sponges. 2ndly, this
foible earned him the admiration of fools; and
that is as invaluable, as they are innumerable.

Yet was there in the mother-tongue he
despised, one gem of a word he vastly admired:
like most quarterly writers. That charming
word, the pet of the polysyllabic, was "OF."

He opened the matter in a subdued and
sympathising tone well calculated to win a loving
father, such as Richard Hardie—was not.

"My good friend here informs me, sir, you
are so fortunate as to possess a son of
distinguished abilities, and who is at present labouring
under some of those precursory indications of
incipient disease of the cerebro-psychical organs,
of which I have been, I may say, somewhat
successful in diagnosing the symptoms. Unless
I have been inadvertently misinformed, he has,
for a considerable time, and only with slight
intermissions, experienced persistent headache of
a kephalalgic or true cerebral type, and has now
advanced to the succeeding stage of taciturnity
and depression, not* unaccompanied with isolation,
and, probably, constipation: but as yet without
hallucination, though possibly, and, as my
experience of the great majority of these cases
would induce me to say, probably, he is not†
undisturbed by one or more of those latent, and, at
first, trifling aberrations, either of the intelligence,
or the senses, which in their preliminary
tages escape the observation of all but the
expert nosologist. In that case, sir, be assured you
have acted the part of a wise and affectionate
parent in soliciting the opportune attention of
a psychological Physician to these morbid
phenomena at present in the initial process of
incubation."
* Anglicè, "accompanied."
† Anglicè, disturbed.