and the tiresome journey was a trip of only four hours, in a comfortable
railway coach, I think I may say that he is fully recovered."

Then the Doctor slipped away. But he had discovered what it was that had
come between the boy and himself. The _man_, Dan Matthews, was no longer
the Doctor's boy. He was "Reverend," "Brother," the _preacher_. All the
morning it had been making itself felt, that something that sets
preachers apart. The Doctor wondered how his young hill-bred giant would
stand being coddled and petted and loved by the wives and mothers of men
who, for their daily bread, met the world bare-handed, and whose
hardships were accepted by them and by these same mothers and wives as a
matter of course.

By this time the Doctor had reached his office, and the sight of the
familiar old rooms that had been the scene of so many revelations of real
tragedies and genuine hardships, known only to the sufferer and to him
professionally, forced him to continue his thought.

"There was Dr. Harry, for instance. Who, beside his old negro
housekeeper, ever petted and coddled _him_? Who ever thought of setting
him apart? Whoever asked if he were rested from his tiresome
journey--journeys made not in comfortable coaches on the railroad, but
in his buggy over all kinds of roads, at all times of day or night, in
all sorts of weather winter and summer, rain and sleet and snow? Whoever
'Reverended' or 'Brothered' him? Oh no, he was only a man, a physician.
It was his business to kill himself trying to keep other people alive."

Dr. Harry Abbott had been first, the Doctor's assistant, then his
partner, and now at last his successor. Of a fine old Southern family,
his people had lost everything in the war when Harry was only a lad. The