that you are an old maid!  Yes, an old maid.  Ah, well-a-day, ’tis a very happy, contented, peaceful sound to me now; but twenty years ago,—­Here comes dear old Dr. Peyton himself up my garden path!  He does not seem to walk so blithely tonight as usual,—­surely nothing is the matter; I wish I could see his face, but it is much too dark for that, so I’ll go at once and let him in.  Now I shall hear news of my opposite neighbor!  Ah, I hope he is no worse, poor little old man!”

Gentle reader, I shall not trouble you much in the story I am going to tell, with any personal experiences of my own.  But you may as well understand before we proceed farther, that I—­Miss Elizabeth Fairleigh—­am a spinster on the shady side of forty-five, that I and my two serving-maids occupy a tiny, green-latticed, porticoed, one-storeyed cottage just outside a certain little country town, and that Dr. Peyton, tile one “medical man” of the parish, is a white-haired old gentleman of wondrous kindliness and goodness of heart, who was Pythias to my father’s Damon at college long, long ago, and who is now my best friend and my most welcome and frequent visitor.  And on the particular evening in question, I had a special interest in his visit, for I wanted very much to know what only he could tell me,—­how matters fared with my neighbor and his patient, the little old man who lay sick over the way.

Now this little old man bore the name of Mr Stephen Gray, and he was a bachelor, so Dr. Peyton said, a bachelor grown, from some cause unknown to my friend, prematurely old, and wizened, and decrepit.  It was long since he had first come to reside in the small house opposite mine, and from the very day of his arrival I had observed him with singular interest, and conjectured variously in my idle moments about his probable history and circumstances.  For many months after his establishment “over the way,” this old gentleman used morning and evening to perambulate the little country road which divided our respective dwellings, supporting his feeble limbs with a venerable-looking staff, silver-headed like himself; and on one occasion, when my flower garden happened to look especially gay and inviting, he paused by the gate and gazed so wistfully at its beauties, that I ventured to invite him in, and presented him, bashfully enough, with a posy of my choicest rarities.  After this unconventional introduction, many little courtesies passed between us, other nosegays were culled from my small parterre to adorn the little old gentleman’s parlour, and more than once Miss Elizabeth Farleigh received and accepted an invitation to tea with Mr Stephen Gray.