flowing lines closing the view.

In this valley down to Brenzett and Colebrook and up to Darnford, the
market town fourteen miles away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy.
He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards had been the
companion of a famous traveller, in the days when there were continents
with unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him
known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country
practice--from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting like
a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence
is of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that
unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a
general truth in every mystery.

A good many years ago now, on my return from abroad, he invited me to
stay with him. I came readily enough, and as he could not neglect his
patients to keep me company, he took me on his rounds--thirty miles or
so of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for him on the roads; the horse
reached after the leafy twigs, and, sitting in the dogcart, I could hear
Kennedy's laugh through the half-open door left open of some cottage. He
had a big, hearty laugh that would have fitted a man twice his size, a
brisk manner, a bronzed face, and a pair of grey, profoundly attentive
eyes. He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and an
inexhaustible patience in listening to their tales.

One day, as we trotted out of a large village into a shady bit of road,
I saw on our left hand a low, black cottage, with diamond panes in the
windows, a creeper on the end wall, a roof of shingle, and some roses
climbing on the rickety trellis-work of the tiny porch. Kennedy pulled
up to a walk. A woman, in full sunlight, was throwing a dripping blanket