"Yes, sir?"

"And if the Sergeant won't leave his retirement
at Dorking——"

"He won't, Mr. Franklin!"

"Then, Betteredge—as far as I can see now
I am at the end of my resources. After Mr.
Bruff and the Sergeant, I don't know of a living
creature who can be of the slightest use to me."

As the words passed my lips, some person
outside knocked at the door of the room.

Betteredge looked surprised as well as
annoyed by the interruption.

"Come in," he called out, irritably, "whoever
you are!"

The door opened, and there entered to us,
quietly, the most remarkable-looking man I had
ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his
movements, he was still young. Judging him
by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge,
he looked the elder of the two. His
complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless
cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over
which the bone projected like a penthouse. His
nose presented the fine shape and modelling so
often found among the ancient people of the
East, so seldom visible among the newer races
of the West. His forehead rose high and
straight from the brow. His marks and
wrinkles were innumerable. From this strange
face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown—
eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in
their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my case,
at least) took your attention captive at their
will. Add to this a quantity of thick closely
curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature,
had lost its colour in the most startlingly
partial and capricious manner. Over the top of
his head it was still of the deep black which
was its natural colour. Round the sides of his
head without the slightest gradation of grey
to break the force of the extraordinary
contrast it had turned completely white. The
line between the two colours preserved no sort
of regularity. At one place, the white hair ran
up into the black; at another, the black hair
ran down into the white. I looked at the man
with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say,
I found it quite impossible to control. His
soft brown eyes looked back at me gently; and
he met my involuntary rudeness in staring at
him, with an apology which I was conscious
that I had not deserved.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I had no
idea that Mr. Betteredge was engaged." He
took a slip of paper from his pocket, and
handed it to Betteredge. "The list for next
week," he said. His eyes just rested on me
again and he left the room as quietly as he
had entered it.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"Mr. Candy's assistant," said Betteredge.
"By-the-bye, Mr. Franklin, you will be sorry
to hear that the little doctor has never
recovered that illness he caught, going home from
the birthday dinner. He's pretty well in health;
but he lost his memory in the fever, and he has
never recovered more than the wreck of it
since. The work all falls on his assistant. Not
much of it now, except among the poor. They
can't help themselves, you know. They must
put up with the man with the piebald hair,
and the gipsy complexion—or they would get
no doctoring at all."

"You don't seem to like him, Betteredge?"

"Nobody likes him, sir."

"Why is he so unpopular?"

"Well, Mr. Franklin, his appearance is
against him, to begin with. And then there's a
story that Mr. Candy took him with a very
doubtful character. Nobody knows who he is
—and he hasn't a friend in the place. How
can you expect one to like him, after that?"

"Quite impossible, of course! May I ask
what he wanted with you, when he gave you
that bit of paper?'

"Only to bring me the weekly list of the sick
people about here, sir, who stand in need of a
little wine. My lady always had a regular
distribution of good sound port and sherry among
the infirm poor; and Miss Rachel wishes the
custom to be kept up. Times have changed!
times have changed! I remember when Mr.
Candy himself brought the list to my mistress.
Now it's Mr. Candy's assistant who brings the
list to me. I'll go on with the letter, if you will
allow me, sir," said Betteredge, drawing
Rosanna Spearman's confession back to him.
"It isn't lively reading, I grant you. But,
there! it keeps me from getting sour with
thinking of the past." He put on his
spectacles, and wagged his head gloomily. "There's
a bottom of good sense, Mr. Franklin, in our
conduct to our mothers, when they first start us
on the journey of life. We are all of us more
or less unwilling to be brought into the world.
And we are all of us right."

Mr. Candy's assistant had produced too strong
an impression on me to be immediately dis-
missed from my thoughts. I passed over the
last unanswerable utterance of the Betteredge
philosophy; and returned to the subject of the
man with the piebald hair.

"What is his name?" I asked.

"As ugly a name as need be," Betteredge
answered, gruffly. "Ezra Jennings."

AGUE AND ITS CAUSE.

THAT of fen places comes malaria, and that
of malaria comes ague, the world has long
known. It is only very lately that science has
made the great step of discovering why this is.
In the early ages men attributed the effects of
malaria to the anger of the gods. The poetic
fancy of the Greek idealised our marsh demon
in the Python killed by Apollo, and the many-
headed Hydra of the German swamp destroyed
by Hercules. Varro and others of his time
watching the effects of malaria in and around
Rome (as one may do to this day), ascribed
marsh fevers to the presence in the air of
"innumerable hordes of imperceptible insects
which, leaving the marshes, enter the body in