Notwithstanding the state of feebleness in which he found Mr. Drake the next morning, he pressed him with question upon question, amounting to a thorough cross-examination concerning Amanda’s history, undeterred by the fact that, whether itself merely bored, or its nature annoyed him, his patient plainly disrelished his catechising.  It was a subject which, as his love to the child increased, had grown less and less agreeable to Mr. Drake:  she was to him so entirely his own that he had not the least desire to find out any thing about her, to learn a single fact or hear a single conjecture to remind him that she was not in every sense as well as the best, his own daughter.  He was therefore not a little annoyed at the persistency of the doctor’s questioning, but, being a courteous man, and under endless obligation to him for the very child’s sake as well as his own, he combated disinclination, and with success, acquainting the doctor with every point he knew concerning Amanda.  Then first the doctor grew capable of giving his attention to the minister himself; whose son if he had been, he could hardly have shown him greater devotion.  A whole week passed before he would allow him to go home.  Dorothy waited upon him, and Amanda ran about the house.  The doctor and she had been friends from the first, and now, when he was at home, there was never any doubt where Amanda was to be found.

The same day on which the Drakes left him, Faber started by the night-train for London, and was absent three days.

Amanda was now perfectly well, but Mr. Drake continued poorly.  Dorothy was anxious to get him away from the river-side, and proposed putting the workmen into the Old House at once.  To this he readily consented, but would not listen to her suggestion that in the meantime he should go to some watering-place.  He would be quite well in a day or two, and there was no rest for him, he said, until the work so sadly bungled was properly done.  He did not believe his plans were defective, and could not help doubting whether they had been faithfully carried out.  But the builder, a man of honest repute, protested also that he could not account for the yielding of the wall, except he had had the mishap to build over some deep drain, or old well, which was not likely, so close to the river.  He offered to put it up again at his own expense, when perhaps they might discover the cause of the catastrophe.

Sundry opinions and more than one rumor were current among the neighbors.  At last they were mostly divided into two parties, the one professing the conviction that the butcher, who was known to have some grudge at the minister, had, under the testudo-shelter of his slaughter-house, undermined the wall; the other indignantly asserting that the absurdity had no foundation except in the evil thoughts of churchmen toward dissenters, being in fact a wicked slander.  When the suggestion reached the minister’s ears, he, knowing the