This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bottom of the steps as Doctor James came opposite.  Her brain transferring its energies from sound to sight, she ceased her clamor and fixed her pop-eyes upon the case the doctor carried.

“Bress de Lawd!” was the benison the sight drew from her.  “Is you a doctor, suh?”

“Yes, I am a physician,” said Doctor James, pausing.

“Den fo’ God’s sake come and see Mister Chandler, suh.  He done had a fit or sump’n.  He layin’ jist like he wuz dead.  Miss Amy sont me to git a doctor.  Lawd knows whar old Cindy’d a skeared one up from, if you, suh, hadn’t come along.  Ef old Mars’ knowed one ten-hundredth part of dese doin’s dey’d be shootin’ gwine on, suh—­pistol shootin’—­leb’m feet marked off on de ground, and ev’ybody a-duellin’.  And dat po’ lamb, Miss Amy—­”

“Lead the way,” said Doctor James, setting his foot upon the step, “if you want me as a doctor.  As an auditor I’m not open to engagements.”

The negress preceded him into the house and up a flight of thickly carpeted stairs.  Twice they came to dimly lighted branching hallways.  At the second one the now panting conductress turned down a hall, stopping at a door and opening it.

“I done brought de doctor, Miss Amy.”

Doctor James entered the room, and bowed slightly to a young lady standing by the side of a bed.  He set his medicine case upon a chair, removed his overcoat, throwing it over the case and the back of the chair, and advanced with quiet self-possession to the bedside.

There lay a man, sprawling as he had fallen—­a man dressed richly in the prevailing mode, with only his shoe removed; lying relaxed, and as still as the dead.

There emanated from Doctor James an aura of calm force and reserve strength that was as manna in the desert to the weak and desolate among his patrons.  Always had women, especially, been attracted by something in his sick-room manner.  It was not the indulgent suavity of the fashionable healer, but a manner of poise, of sureness, of ability to overcome fate, of deference and protection and devotion.  There was an exploring magnetism in his steadfast, luminous brown eves; a latent authority in the impassive, even priestly, tranquillity of his smooth countenance that outwardly fitted him for the part of confidant and consoler.  Sometimes, at his first professional visit, women would tell him where they hid their diamonds at night from the burglars.

With the ease of much practice, Doctor James’s unroving eyes estimated the order and quality of the room’s furnishings.  The appointments were rich and costly.  The same glance had secured cognizance of the lady’s appearance.  She was small and scarcely past twenty.  Her face possessed the title to a winsome prettiness, now obscured by (you would say) rather a fixed melancholy than the more violent imprint of a sudden sorrow.  Upon her forehead, above one eyebrow, was a livid bruise, suffered, the physician’s eye told him, within the past six hours.