He
seemed, though we had not the words to put it so, an exiled prince. He
went straight through Tiverton Street until he came to the parsonage;
and something about it (perhaps its garden, hot with flowers, larkspur,
coreopsis, and the rest) detained his eye, and he walked in. Next day
the old doctor was there also with his little black case, but we were
none the wiser for that; for the old doctor was of the sort who
intrench themselves in a professional reserve. You might draw up beside
the road to question him, but you could as well deter the course of
nature. He would give the roan a flick, and his sulky would flash by.
"What's the matter with so-and-so?" would ask a mousing neighbor.
"He's sick," ran the laconic reply.
"Goin' to die?" one daring querist ventured further.
"Some time," said the doctor.
But though he assumed a right to combat thus the outer world, no one
was gentler with a sick man or with those about him in their grief. To
the latter he would speak; but he used to say he drew his line at
second cousins.
Into his hands and the true old parson's fell the stranger's
confidence, if confidence it were. He may have died solitary and
unexplained; but no matter what he said, his story was safe.
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