“I’ve tried everything except egg-nog,” the doctor went on, “and pink pills, and I would like to turn over the responsibility to someone else.  I think perhaps his trouble must be mental—­some gnawing sorrow that keeps him awake at night.  I don’t mind driving Pleurisy where people know me and know that I do feed him occasionally, but it is disconcerting when I meet strangers to have kind-looking old ladies shake their heads at me.  I know what they’re thinking, and I believe Pleurisy really enjoys it, and then when I drive past a farmhouse to see the whole family run out and hold their sides is not a pleasure.  Talk about scattering sunshine!  Pleurisy leaves a trail of merriment wherever he goes.”

“What difference does it make what people think when your conscience is clear.  You do feed your horse, you feed him well, so what’s the odds,” inquired the Rev. Hugh Grantley, son of granite, child of the heather, looking with lifted brows at his friend.

“Oh, there you go!” the doctor said smiling.  “That’s the shorter catechism coming out in you—­that Scotch complacency is the thing I wish I had, but I can’t help feeling like a rogue, a cheat, an oppressor of the helpless, when I look at Pleurisy.”

“Horace,” the minister said kindly, with his level gray eyes fixed thoughtfully on his friend’s handsome face, “a man in either your calling or mine has no right to ask himself how he feels.  Don’t feel your own pulse too much.  It is disquieting.  It is for us to go on, never faltering and never looking behind.”

“In other words, to make good, and never mind the fans,” the doctor smiled.  Then he became serious.  “But Grantley, I am not always so sure I am right as you are.  You see a sinner is always a sinner and in danger of damnation, for which there is but one cure, but a sick man may have quinsy or he may have diphtheria, and the treatment is different.  But oh!  Grantley, I wish I had that Scotch-gray confidence in myself that you have.  If you were a doctor you would tell a man he had typhoid, and he’d proceed to have it, even if he had only set out to have an ingrowing toe-nail.  But my patients have a decided will of their own.  There’s young Ab Cowan—­they sent for me last night to go out to see him.  He has a bad attack of quinsy, but it is the strangest case I ever saw.”

The gaiety had died out of the young man’s face, and he looked perplexed and anxious.

“I do wish the old doctor and I were on speaking terms,” he concluded.

“And are you not?” the minister asked in surprise.  “Miss Barner told me that you had been very kind—­and I thought—­” There was a flush on the minister’s face, and he hesitated.

“Oh, Miss Barner and I are the best of friends,” the doctor said.  “I say, Grantley, hasn’t that little girl had one lonely life, and isn’t she the brave little soul!”

The minister was silent, all but his eyes.

The doctor went on: