hands, he had further burdened himself with the task of boiling a tongue, which was so large that it required frequent fresh supplies of water, lest it should become uncovered. This self-chosen work had become tedious; moreover, the Urban District Council had met that morning, and the doctor was full of the great question of the new water-supply. "Cap'en Dickie may be up still," said he to himself, "and he's full of pith if you catch him late enough."

Like many men, Dr. Tony was himself apt to be taciturn at noon, and garrulous at midnight.

Captain Penrice's house stood a few steps down the road; a light still glimmered downstairs, and the doctor soon fetched him out and across the road to undertake the joint work of watching the tongue.

"I've got old Varcoe on my hands with a temperature near Kingdom Come, so I thought I'd get this tongue boiled, as I must sit up anyway," said he, as the two men settled down by the fire.

"With two women in the house, are you obliged to do jobs like that?" asked the captain, with a laugh.

"Don't get a tongue like this warmed through, women don't," said Dr. Tony; "ideas too small for it-and just look at the size of this one. Now, women's minds are made for small things. They wouldn't rise to a thing like this."

Like many philosophers, Dr. Borlace now regarded the tongue, since it had become his, as a glorious, almost Homeric joint, though he had much depreciated its quality before.

"Fall to," said he, waving his hand hospitably towards the table, and setting plates and glasses, "there's Stilton and whisky. It's usually Cheddar and ale with me, but I earned a few fees yesterday with a few damned lies. Wherefore the Stilton and whisky. Odd, isn't it, that all my life, success is the bird I've been trying to put salt on the tail of, and never got her yet."

"She's a jade you mustn't woo, if you want to win, I've heard say."

"Faith, you're right. And, talking of another kind of wooing, just look here." He held out a portfolio of papers. "Fair copies of proposals, every one. And all refused, by the Lord, only I didn't keep the answers. And yet, every letter I wrote, I said when I'd done it, 'That'll fetch 'em.' But it never did. Now, there's one to a rich widow I stalked all one summer: her heart was in the coffin there with Samuel-or so she said. But it didn't stay there long, for the very next year she was married again—but not to me."

"And then you met my niece," said the captain, wondering whether it was whisky or Wilmot that was making the doctor so expansive.

"And do you know what I said when I got back here after she'd accepted me?" asked the doctor.

"Nunc dimittis ?" asked Captain Penrice, drawing his grizzled eyebrows together into a mark of interrogation.

"I said, 'Tony, you've done it at last. A fine woman's taken you, and now you can hold up your head.""

"Ay, that's the Nunc dimittis. Not many better moments, except when you've weathered a gale round the Horn."

"And talking of success," said Dr. Borlace, holding a match luxuriously to a fresh pipe, "I've come to grips at last with the Council about the water. It's wigs on the green, and no mistake, too."

"Won't hear of it?" asked Captain Penrice, between long puffs.

"Well, 'tisn't that. For they know they must hear of it. I've made it pretty plain that it's a new supply-or typhoid next hot weather, and the prospects of the town ruined for years as a health place. And look at its chances for that-swept every side by sea-wind."

"Then, what's the hitch, if they know all that?"

"They know it," said Dr. Borlace, grimly, "because they see pretty well that other folks would soon know it, for we've got a Press in the land, to knock sense even into a place like this. No, that's not the difficulty."

"What, then?"

"The material the pipes are to be made of. The usual thing is iron mains and lead supply pipes, and that won't do here?" "Why not?"

"Lead pipes are too dangerous with the kind of upland surface water we must tap for the new supply. Oh, I've sent it to be analyzed, and I'm certain I'm right. I've always made a special study of public health questions, you know."

"But what are the special conditions with this water, because it's upland surface water in all these southern towns, after all?”

"See here," said Dr. Tony, leaning forward with tapping forefinger to illustrate his point, "there's very little sulphate of lime in the only water supply we can draw from for Challacombe. Now, sulphate of lime in 'soft' water prevents corrosion of lead, but there isn't enough of it in this water to prevent corrosion of the lead in the pipes. And corroded lead in water is a cumulative poison, of course." "Result?" queried Captain Penrice.

"Put in lead pipes, and you'll have cases of lead poisoning after they've been in a few months. And there's even a worse point. In this water there's a deal of nitrate of ammonia, and that hastens corrosion."

"Well, then, use iron pipes."

"Difficult to work, and therefore very expensive. And that's the point on which everything turns-cheapness." "Any other sort usable ?"

"Health pipes, perhaps, lined with tin-and expensive

too."

"What line do the Council take, then?"

"Oh, I'm wrong in my chemistry, or rather I'm wrong in what I deduce from it, for they can't say the analyst had any motive to deceive them. Or if I'm not wrong in them, then lead poisoning's healthy."

"What's it like?"

"Pains in the limbs, anæmia, slow poisoning."
"Slow?"

“Oh, very in this form. It mightn't shorten many lives, but it drains the vital forces all the same. And what's the good of bringing in the purest of moor water and running it through poison pipes."

"Lead pipes or typhoid, eh?"

"Then I say it shall be typhoid. We'll have 'health' pipes or none. And what I say I'll stick to. I hate half measures. And after all, lead poisoning can be anything but a joke."

"It's a slight risk you seem to be running with the lead pipes, and a big one with typhoid. Of two evils choose the smaller, they say."

"If all the damned old wives' proverbs had been hanged, drawn, and quartered in the Middle Ages, it would have been a deal easier to live here now," growled the doctor. "Talking of old wives' tales, look at that," said he, taking a photograph from the midst of the fair copies in the portfolio. "Vaccination results," he said, pointing to the leprous child in the photograph. He kept a store of such records in close proximity to the other records of sentiment. "And yet you have your regular vaccination days," said Captain Penrice, quietly.

"The majority say, 'Vaccinate, or else no Stilton and whisky,' therefore I vaccinate. If you go anywhere on the mind tack in this world, you must juggle a bit with your convictions. The beaten track, that's what you've got to walk in. There's nobody more pedantic than I-in business hours."

Ay, perhaps so. I've never been on the mind tack

myself, so I can't say. Good honest wood and iron is good enough for me. If you can drive a rivet straight, you needn't bother about opinions."

"And it's just because I give way everywhere else, that over the pipes I'll do what's my notion of the right-or I'll never hold up my head again."

"Um," said Captain Penrice, "well, I hope you will win, but Challacombe is a small place to show the way where big towns have been satisfied with something less than perfection, for I've never heard of this special point, though we've often heard of new supplies being brought in. Therefore, I suppose they put up with lead."

"Challacombe won't, as long as I'm Medical Officer. I shall resign first," said Dr. Borlace, who really enjoyed feeling himself a very splendid fellow.

No one appreciated his merits more than he. His past career had been one of hard struggle: a poor degree, partly due to his spasmodic style of work, and partly the result of the precious time taken from his own reading to help a friend whose eyesight failed in the last months of degree work, had been followed by a country practice among fisherfolk. He was heavily handicapped also by a disregard of conventionality, which the world only condones in men of extraordinary mastery, and which was even more of a hindrance to him in prim country society than it would have been in the wider air of a city. His eccentricity had, undoubtedly, stood in the way of his success with women, for the doctor had only too often given a farcical appearance to an episode which the woman in question yearned to regard as an idyll.

Varcoe answered to the helm that night, or rather to the blood-letting, for Dr. Borlace regularly bled for fever when his patients were those lusty master mariners amongst whom his practice chiefly lay. For blood-letting, while being cheaper