"Never saw such weather or such a season in my life, Sir John. They tell us that 'a green winter makes a full churchyard,' but the saying doesn't hold good down here. Why, bless my heart, everybody's out hunting instead of being ill, and there's nothing for me to do at all."

"Ah Doctor," replies the Master, laughing, "it's better for us than for you then; and yet, in the long run, if the truth was known, I expect you can score more kills than my hounds."

A busy man is Edward Wilson, Esq., M.D., with an increasing practice necessitating the[Pg 73] help of an assistant. Yet so devoted is he to hunting, that he thinks it a very hard case if he does not manage one day a-week with the hounds. As he rides up, the picture of robust health and the pink of neatness, one would scarcely imagine, as one listens to his chaffing about the weather and the paucity of patients, that he had had exactly two hours' sleep the night before, and was almost certain to find a message on his return home, calling him away some seven or eight miles, with the prospect of another nocturnal vigil. Yet such is the case. Yesterday afternoon, when he came back from his round, he had said to Thomas his coachman: "I shall manage a day to-morrow, Thomas; I don't think there is anything likely to happen, so have old Ladybird ready for me in the morning. They meet at Willowfield Lodge, and are certain to draw towards home."

Just as he was going to bed, a groom from Lorton Towers came galloping into his yard with an urgent message "As 'ow Doctor wur[Pg 74] wanted at once; Lady Slowboy's took bad;" and away he had to go to assist the future Lord Slowboy on his "first appearance on any stage."

"Hang it all; she might have put it off," he said to himself as he buttoned his coat; "but I'm not going to lose my day's hunting for fifty heirs of Lorton;" and at 5.30 A.M., the ceremony being over, before turning in he gave orders that he was to be called at half-past seven, and at half-past ten he arrives, as we see him, hale and hearty, at Willowfield Lodge.

Very well mounted is the Doctor, for he knows a horse when he sees one; and though he only keeps two—or rather, as he himself puts it, "one and a half" (the second one having to take him occasionally on professional trips)—they are both something above the average, and when hounds are running, Ladybird or Precipitate, the two horses, are pretty nearly certain to be seen in the van. It does not require a second glance at the keen[Pg 75] eyes, the determined mouth, wreathed in a cheery smile, and the strong nervous hands, to show that before one is a man of iron will.

Prompt of decision, quick at diagnosing disease, with a heart full of sympathy for suffering, yet never faltering when forced to resort to the knife, Edward Wilson has made a name for himself second to none in that part of England. Indeed, over and over again his old friend and patron, Sir George Fennel, the great London physician, has urged him to migrate to town; but his answer is always the same:

"Couldn't live through one season. I must be in the fresh air; and if I did not see hounds now and then, I should pine away. Besides, I should miss all my old friends in Bullshire so; and as for fame, old Widow Fletcher and John Billings the blacksmith would not believe you if you told them there was a cleverer man than myself living! Poor souls! it shows their ignorance; but what more can I want?"

[Pg 76]

The Doctor is quite right. Among the poor he and the Parson run a neck-and-neck race for popularity. Perhaps from the fact of being associated with that, to them, great mystery—medicine—the Doctor is held in greater awe; but they all remember how, hand-in-hand, the two fought death in the fever-time; and the great authorities I have mentioned—the widow and the blacksmith—assert that "Doctor ay does know summat about rheumatiz; ay's got some stuff as sends it away all in a jiff like."

It is fifteen years ago since Edward Wilson, then five-and-twenty, came down to Bullshire as assistant to old Dr. Johnstone. He rather astonished the methodical old practitioner with his theories, for the young Doctor, whose whole soul was in his profession, had read deeply and judiciously, and was far in advance of the old-fashioned routine of blood-letting, cupping, and Epsom salts.

At first folks shook their heads, and muttered "Quackery;" but one or two bad[Pg 77] cases, which had been given over as hopeless by the principal, being successfully pulled through by the assistant, they began to think that after all there was something in the young fellow; and the surgical skill he displayed when, together with every other available medical man, he was called to the scene of the fearful railway accident at Billingdon, confirmed their opinion.

A year after this, old Johnstone died suddenly, and Wilson, after a brisk competition, bought his practice. Directly he felt himself his own master, he allowed his ideas a free scope, and consequently in a very short time his undoubted talent made itself known throughout the country-side, and the practice increased so enormously that, young and energetic as he was, he found it necessary to take an assistant, choosing after much deliberation the son of an old college chum and fellow-student.

"Why, Doctor, who'd have thought of seeing you to-day? I thought you were at[Pg 78] Lorton all last night," exclaims Mr. Noble, Lord Slowboy's agent, who rides up as Sir John finishes his repartee.

"So I was, Noble," replies our M.D., "but her ladyship, I am thankful to say, let............