from a funeral.  It had been that of a boy of Dolph’s years, who had been apprentice to a famous German doctor, and had died of a consumption.  It is true, there had been a whisper that the deceased had been brought to his end by being made the subject of the doctor’s experiments, on which he was apt to try the effects of a new compound, or a quieting draught.  This, however, it is likely, was a mere scandal; at any rate, Peter de Groodt did not think it worth mentioning; though, had we time to philosophize, it would be a curious matter for speculation, why a doctor’s family is apt to be so lean and cadaverous, and a butcher’s so jolly and rubicund.

Peter de Groodt, as I said before, entered the house of Dame Heyliger, with unusual alacrity.  He was full of a bright idea that had popped into his head at the funeral, and over which he had chuckled as he shovelled the earth into the grave of the doctor’s disciple.  It had occurred to him, that, as the situation of the deceased was vacant at the doctor’s, it would be the very place for Dolph.  The boy had parts, and could pound a pestle and run an errand with any boy in the town-and what more was wanted in a student?

The suggestion of the sage Peter was a vision of glory to the mother.  She already saw Dolph, in her mind’s eye, with a cane at his nose, a knocker at his door, and an M.D. at the end of his name—­one of the established dignitaries of the town.

The matter, once undertaken, was soon effected; the sexton had some influence with the doctor, they having had much dealing together in the way of their separate professions; and the very next morning he called and conducted the urchin, clad in his Sunday clothes, to undergo the inspection of Dr. Karl Lodovick Knipperhausen.

They found the doctor seated in an elbow-chair, in one corner of his study, or laboratory, with a large volume, in German print, before him.  He was a short, fat man, with a dark, square face, rendered more dark by a black velvet cap.  He had a little, knobbed nose, not unlike the ace of spades, with a pair of spectacles gleaming on each side of his dusky countenance, like a couple of bow-windows.

Dolph felt struck with awe, on entering into the presence of this learned man; and gazed about him with boyish wonder at the furniture of this chamber of knowledge, which appeared to him almost as the den of a magician.  In the centre stood a claw-footed table, with pestle and mortar, phials and gallipots, and a pair of small, burnished scales.  At one end was a heavy clothes-press, turned into a receptacle for drugs and compounds; against which hung the doctor’s hat and cloak, and gold-headed cane, and on the top grinned a human skull.  Along the mantelpiece were glass vessels, in which were snakes and lizards, and a human foetus preserved in spirits.  A closet, the doors of which were taken off, contained three whole shelves of books, and some, too, of mighty folio dimensions—­a collection, the like of which Dolph had never before beheld.  As, however, the library did not take up the whole of the closet, the doctor’s thrifty housekeeper had occupied the rest with pots of pickles and preserves; and had hung about the room, among awful implements of the healing art, strings of red pepper and corpulent cucumbers, carefully preserved for seed.