anything uncommon in the maunds; how he taught them to be observant,
alert for any strange fish, and to bring it home alive, if possible;
and how he was never so happy as when seated on a bollard near the
Quay-head with a drawing-board on his knee, busy--for he was a wonder
with pencil and brush--transferring to paper the outline and markings
of a specimen and its perishable exquisite colours; working rapidly
while he listened to the account of its capture, and maybe pausing
now and again to pencil a note on the margin of the portrait.
They told, too, of his ways--how for a whole month he came forth from
his front door in a crouching posture, almost on all fours, so as not
to disturb the work of a diadem spider that had chosen to build its
web across the porch; of his professional skill, that "trust yourself
to th' Old Doctor, and he'd see you came to a natral end of some
sort, and in no haste, neither;" of his habit of dress, that (when
not in martial uniform) he wore a black suit with knee-breeches, silk
stockings, and silver shoe-buckles; of his kindness of heart, that in
the _Notes of Periodic Phenomena_, which he regularly kept, he always
recorded a midnight gale towards the close of August, to account for
the mysterious depletion of his apple-crop.


But the Old Doctor had gone to his fathers long ago, and the old
house, divided into two tenements--with access by one porch and front
passage--had been occupied for twenty years past by Nicky-Nan and
(for eight or nine) by the Penhaligon family. Nicky-Nan's cantle
overhung the river, and comprised a kitchen and scullery on the
ground-floor, with a fairly large bedroom above it. The old Doctor's
own bedroom it had been, and was remarkable for an open fireplace
with two large recessed cupboards let into a wall, which measured a
good four feet in depth beyond the chimney-breast. Once, in cleaning