Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch,
said, "I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me."

Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the
bedclothes. Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself
on the edge of Miss Melbury's coverlet.

"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side,"
said Grace.

Mrs. Oliver looked across. "Oh, that," she said, "is from the
doctor's. He's often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you
don't know that we've a doctor living here now--Mr. Fitzpiers by
name?"

Grace admitted that she had not heard of him.

"Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice. I know
him very well, through going there to help 'em scrub sometimes,
which your father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare
time. Being a bachelor-man, he've only a lad in the house. Oh
yes, I know him very well. Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I
were his own mother."

"Indeed."

"Yes. 'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came
here where there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I
came here. I took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's
practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr.