carried by the countryman.

"You've been game as any fighting man, Tom," said he, cheerily. "The
drive home'll be no midsummer-night's-dream, but I see that upper lip of
yours is stiff for it. Good-night--and good luck! We'll take care of the
luck."

As he turned back up the path the front door of his house swung open. It
was a door he had never entered more than once, his offices being in the
wing, and the upright portion having been totally unused since he had
owned the place. With an exclamation he was up the steps in two leaps,
and standing still upon the threshold.

"Come in a little farther, please, dear," said a voice from behind the
door, "so I can close it."

Burns shut the door with a bang, and turned upon the figure in the
corner. But his extended arm kept his wife away from him. "Let me go and
refresh," he begged. "I can't bear to touch you after handling that
unwashed lumberjack. Just five minutes and I'll be back."

He was as good as his word. In five minutes he was no longer a busy
professional man, but a gentleman of leisure, with hands cleaner than
those of any fastidious clubman, and clothes which carried no hint of
past usage in other places less chaste than his wife's private
living-rooms.

"Now I'm ready for you," he announced, returning. "And I'll be hanged if
I'll see another interloper to-night. A man has some rights, if he is a
doctor. Morgan, up the street there, is the new man in town, and he has a