Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 | Page 4

ordered a glass of brandy and water, and some biscuits. I had been
seated a very short time only, when the quick, consequential step, and
sharp, cracked voice of Dr Lee sounded along the passage; and after a
momentary pause at the bar, his round, smirking, good-humoured,
knavish face looked in at the parlour-door, where, seeing me alone, he
winked with uncommon expression, and said aloud: 'A prime fire in the
smoking-room, I see; I shall treat myself to a whiff there presently.'
This said, the shining face vanished, in order, I doubted not, that its
owner might confer with the young girl who had been inquiring for him.
This Lee, I must observe, had no legal right to the prefix of doctor

tacked to his name. He was merely a peripatetic quack-salver and
vender of infallible medicines, who, having wielded the pestle in an
apothecary's shop for some years during his youth, had acquired a little
skill in the use of drugs, and could open a vein or draw a tooth with
considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very
remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling
community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the
hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one
not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of
his patients. This essential condition Lee, hypocrite and knave as he
was, strictly fulfilled; and no inducement could, I think, have prevailed
upon him to betray the hiding-place of a wounded or suffering client. In
other respects, he permitted himself a more profitable freedom of action,
thereto compelled, he was wont apologetically to remark, by the
wretchedly poor remuneration obtained by his medical practice. If,
however, specie was scarce amongst his clients, spirits, as his rubicund,
carbuncled face flamingly testified, were very plentiful. There was a
receipt in full painted there for a prodigious amount of drugs and
chemicals, so that, on the whole, he could have had no great reason to
complain.
He soon reappeared, and took a chair by the fire, which, after civilly
saluting me, he stirred almost fiercely, eyeing as he did so the blazing
coals with a half-abstracted and sullen, cowed, disquieted look
altogether unusual with him. At least wherever I had before seen him,
he had been as loquacious and boastful as a Gascon.
'What is the matter, doctor?' I said. 'You appear strangely down upon
your luck all at once.'
'Hush--hush! Speak lower, sir, pray. The fact is, I have just heard that a
fellow is lurking about here--You have not, I hope, asked for me of any
one?'
'I have not; but what if I had?'
'Why, you see, sir, that suspicion--calumny, Shakspeare says, could not
be escaped, even if one were pure as snow--and more especially,

therefore, when one is not quite so--so----Ahem!--you understand?'
'Very well, indeed. You would say, that when one is not actually
immaculate--calumny, suspicion takes an earlier and firmer hold.'
'Just so; exactly--and, in fact--ha!'----
The door was suddenly thrown open, and the doctor fairly leaped to his
feet with ill-disguised alarm. It was only the bar-maid, to ask if he had
rung. He had not done so, and as it was perfectly understood that I paid
for all on these occasions, that fact alone was abundantly conclusive as
to the disordered state of his intellect. He now ordered brandy and
water, a pipe, and a screw of tobacco. These ministrants to a mind
disturbed somewhat calmed the doctor's excitement, and his cunning
gray eyes soon brightly twinkled again through a haze of curling
smoke.
'Did you notice,' he resumed, 'a female sitting in the bar? She knows
you.'
'A young, intelligent-looking girl. Yes. Who is she?'
'Young!' replied Lee, evasively, I thought. 'Well, it's true she is young
in years, but not in experience--in suffering, poor girl, as I can bear
witness.'
'There are, indeed, but faint indications of the mirth and lightness of
youth or childhood in those timid, apprehensive eyes of hers.'
'She never had a childhood. Girls of her condition seldom have. Her
father's booked for the next world, and by an early stage too, unless he
mends his manners, and that I hardly see how he's to do. The girl's been
to Lymington to see after a place. Can't have it. Her father's character is
against her. Unfortunate; for she's a good girl.'
'I am sorry for her. But come, to business. How about the matter you
wot of?'

'Here are all the particulars,' answered Lee, with an easy transition from
a sentimental to a common-sense, business-like tone, and at the same
time unscrewing the lid of a tortoise-shell tobacco-box, and taking a
folded paper from it. 'I keep these matters generally here; for if I were
to