Some two hundred years back, a Dr. Thomas May had been headmaster,
but ever since that time there had always been an M. D., not a D. D.,
in the family, owning a comfortable demesne of spacious garden, and
field enough for two cows, still green and intact, among modern
buildings and improvements.

The present Dr. May stood very high in his profession, and might soon
have made a large fortune in London, had he not held fast to his home
attachments. He was extremely skilful and clever, with a boyish
character that seemed as if it could never grow older; ardent,
sensitive, and heedless, with a quickness of sympathy and tenderness
of heart that was increased, rather than blunted, by exercise in
scenes of suffering.

At the end of the previous summer holidays, Dr. May had been called
one morning to attend a gentleman who had been taken very ill, at the
Swan Inn.

He was received by a little boy of ten years old, in much grief,
explaining that his brother had come two days ago from London, to
bring him to school here; he had seemed unwell ever since they met,
and last night had become much worse. And extremely ill the doctor
found him; a youth of two or three and twenty, suffering under a
severe attack of fever, oppressed, and scarcely conscious, so as
quite to justify his little brother's apprehensions. He advised the
boy to write to his family, but was answered by a look that went to
his heart--"Alan" was all he had in the world--father and mother were
dead, and their relations lived in Scotland, and were hardly known to
them.