ill-rewarded course of life which we have endeavoured to describe. He
was a man between forty and fifty, devoted to his profession, and of
such reputation in the medical world, that he had been more than once,
as opportunities occurred, advised to exchange Middlemas and its meagre
circle of practice, for some of the larger towns in Scotland, or for
Edinburgh itself. This advice he had always declined. He was a plain
blunt man, who did not love restraint, and was unwilling to subject
himself to that which was exacted in polite society. He had not himself
found out, nor had any friend hinted to him, that a slight touch of the
cynic, in manner and habits, gives the physician, to the common eye, an
air of authority which greatly tends to enlarge his reputation. Mr.
Gray, or, as the country people called him, Doctor Gray, (he might hold
the title by diploma for what I know, though he only claimed the rank of
Master of Arts,) had few wants, and these were amply supplied by a
professional income which generally approached two hundred pounds a
year, for which, upon an average, he travelled about five thousand miles
on horseback in the course of the twelve months. Nay, so liberally did
this revenue support himself and his ponies, called Pestle and Mortar,
which he exercised alternately, that he took a damsel to share it, Jean
Watson, namely, the cherry-cheeked daughter of an honest farmer, who
being herself one of twelve children who had been brought up on an
income of fourscore pounds a year, never thought there could be poverty
in more than double the sum; and looked on Gray, though now termed by
irreverent youth the Old Doctor, as a very advantageous match. For
several years they had no children, and it seemed as if Doctor Gray, who
had so often assisted the efforts of the goddess Lucina, was never to
invoke her in his own behalf. Yet his domestic roof was, on a remarkable
occasion, decreed to be the scene where the goddess's art was required.

Late of an autumn evening three old women might be observed plying their