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26, 1862.]

house of Dr. West was already lighted up. Gas at its front door, gas at its surgery door, gas inside its windows: no habitation in the place was ever so extensively lighted as Dr. West’s. The house was enclosed with iron railings, and on its side—detached—was the surgery. A very low place, this surgery: you had to go down a step or two, and then plunge into a low door. In the time of the last tenant it had been used as a garden-tool house. It was a tolerably large room, and had a tolerably small window, which was in front, next the door. A counter ran along the room at the back, and a table, covered with miscellaneous articles, stood on the right. Shelves were ranged completely round the room aloft, and a pair of steps, used for getting down the jars and bottles, rested in a corner. There was another room behind it, used exclusively by Dr. West.

Seated on the counter, pounding desperately away at something in a mortar, as if his life depended on it, was a peculiar-looking gentleman in shirt-sleeves. Very tall, very thin, with legs and arms that bore the appearance of being too long even for his tall body, great hands and feet, a thin face, dark and red, a thin aquiline nose, black hair, and black prominent eyes that seemed to be always on the stare,—there sat he, his legs dangling and his fingers working. A straightforward, honest, simple fellow looked he, all utility and practicalness—if there is such a word. One, plain in all ways.

It was Janus Verner: never, in the memory of anybody, called anything but “Jan:” second and youngest son of Lady Verner, brother to Lionel.