hues.  The long table was covered with corks, empty bottles, books, a medicine-case, and newspapers, besides a mighty inkstand and writing materials.  There were also a box of cigars, a great leather tobacco pouch, and, interspersed among all, a multitude of pipes.  The doctor drew a chair beside this chaotic table lit with rainbow lights, and invited James to sit down.  “Sit down a moment,” he said.  “Will you have a pipe or a cigar?”

“Cigar, please,” replied James.  The doctor pushed the box toward him.  James realized immediately a ten-cent cigar at the least when he began to smoke.  Doctor Gordon filled a pipe mechanically.  His face still wore the gloomy, almost fierce, expression which it had assumed at table.  He was a handsome man in a rough, sketchy fashion.  His face was blurred with a gray grizzle of beard.  He wore his hair rather long, and he had a fashion of running his fingers through it, which made it look like a thick brush.  He dressed rather carelessly, still like a gentleman.  His clothes were slouchy, and needed brushing, but his linen was immaculate.

Doctor Gordon smoked in silence, which his young assistant was too shy to break.  The elder man finished his pipe, then he rose with an impatient gesture and shook himself like a great shaggy dog.  “Come, young man,” said he, “we don’t want to spend the evening like this.  Get your hat and coat.”

James obeyed, and the two men left the office by the outer door which opened on the stable.  As they came around by the front of the house Clemency stood in the doorway.

“Are you going out, you and Doctor Elliot, Uncle Tom?” she called.

“Yes, dear; why?”

“Patients?”

“No; we are going down to Georgie K.’s.  Tell your mother to go to bed at once.”

When the two men were out in the street, walking briskly in the keen frosty air, James ventured a question.  “Mrs. Ewing is not well, is she?” he said.  He fairly started at the way in which his question was received.  Doctor Gordon turned upon him even fiercely.

“She is perfectly well, perfectly well,” he replied.

“She does not look—­” began James.

“When you are as old as I am you can venture to diagnose on a woman’s looks,” said Gordon.  “Clara is perfectly well.”

James said no more.  They walked on in silence under a pale sky.  Above a low mountain range on their right was a faint light which indicated the coming of the moon.  The ground was frozen in hard ridges.  James walked behind the doctor on the narrow blue stone walk which served as sidewalk.

“This town has made no provision whatever for courting couples,” said Doctor Gordon suddenly, and to James’s astonishment his whole manner and voice had changed.  It was far from gloomy.  It was jocular even.

James laughed.  “Yes, it would be difficult for two to walk arm in arm, however loving,” he returned.

“Just so,” said the doctor, “and the funny part of it is that this narrow sidewalk was intentional.”