Should Miss Gossaway have been sitting at her.
lookout some weeks after Martha's interview with
Captain Nat Holt, and should she have watched the
movements of Doctor John's gig as it rounded into
the open gate of Cobden Manor, she must have
decided that something out of the common was either
happening or about to happen inside Yardley's hospitable
doors. Not only was the sorrel trotting at her
best, the doctor flapping the lines along her brown
back, his body swaying from side to side with the
motion of the light vehicle, but as he passed her house
he was also consulting the contents of a small envelope
which he had taken from his pocket.

"Please come early," it read. "I have something
important to talk over with you."

A note of this character signed with so adorable a
name as "Jane Cobden" was so rare in the doctor's
experience that he had at once given up his round
of morning visits and, springing into his waiting gig,
had started to answer it in person.

He was alive with expectancy. What could she
want with him except to talk over some subject that
they had left unfinished? As he hurried on there
came into his mind half a dozen matters, any one
of which it would have been a delight to revive. He