began to dig the ground about his shed, and plant roots and herbs in it, Sir Peter let him do it and never interfered. It was quite the opposite; for Sir Peter would sometimes stand to watch him at his work, talking the while.
In the course of time there was quite an extensive garden round the shed—comparatively speaking, you know, for we do not expect to see a shed garden as large as that of a mansion. It was fenced in with a hedge and wooden palings, all the work of Abel Crew’s hands. Sir Peter was dead then; but Lady Chavasse, guardian to the young heir, Sir Geoffrey, extended to him the same favour that her husband had, and, if she did not absolutely sanction what he was doing, she at any rate did not oppose it. Abel Crew filled his garden with rare and choice and useful field herbs, the valuable properties of which he alone understood; and of ordinary sweet flowers, such as bees love to suck. He set up bee-hives and sold the honey; he distilled lavender and bergamot for perfumes; he converted his herbs and roots into medicines, which he supplied to the poor people around, charging so small a price for them that it could scarcely more than cover the cost of making, and not charging at all the very poor. At the end of about ten years from his first appearance, he took down the old shed, and built up a more convenient cottage in its place, doing it all with his own pair of hands. And the years went on and on, and Abel Crew and his cottage, and his herbs, and his flowers, and his bees, and his medicines, were just as much of an institution in the parish as was the Grange itself.
He and I became good friends. I liked him. You have heard how I take likes and dislikes to faces, and I rarely saw a face that I liked as I liked Abel Crew’s. Not for its beauty, though it really was beautiful, with its perfect shape and delicately carved features; but for its unmistakable look of goodness and its innate refinement: perhaps also for the deep, far-seeing, and often sad expression that sat in the earnest eyes. He was old now—sixty, I dare say; tall, slender, and very upright still; his white hair brushed back from his forehead and worn rather long. What his original condition of life might have been did not transpire; he never talked of it. More than once I had seen him reading Latin books; and though he fell into the diction of the country people around when talking with them, he changed his tones and language when conversing with his betters. A character, no doubt, he was, but a man to be respected; a man of religion, too—attending church regularly twice on a Sunday, wet or dry, and carrying his religion into the little things of everyday life.
His style of dress was old-fashioned and peculiar. So far as I saw, it never varied. A stout coat, waistcoat, and breeches every day, all of one colour—drab; with leathern gaiters buttoned nearly to the knee. On Sundays he wore a suit of black silk velvet, and a frilled shirt of fine cambric. His breeches were tied at the knee with black ribbon, in which was a plain, glistening steel buckle; buckles to match shone in his shoes. His stockings were black, and in the winter he wore black-cloth gaiters. In short, on Sundays Abel Crew looked like a fine old-fashioned English gentleman, and would have been taken for one. The woman who got up his linen declared he was more particular over his shirt-frills than Sir Peter himself.
Strangers in the place would sometimes ask what he was. The answer was not easy to give. He was a botanist and herbalist, and made pills, and mixtures, and perfumes, and sold honey, and had built his cottage and planted out his garden, and lived alone, cooking his food and waiting on himself; doing all in fact with his own hands, and was very modest always. On the other side, he had travelled in his youth, he understood paintings, studied the stars, read his store of Latin and classical books, and now and then bought more, and was as good a doctor as Duffham himself. Some people said a better one. Certain it was, that more than once when legitimate medical nostrums had failed—calomel and blisters and bleeding—Abel Crew’s simple decoctions and leaves had worked a cure. Look at young Mrs. Sterling at the Court. When that first baby of hers came to town—and a fine squalling young brat he was, with a mouth like a crocodile’s!—gatherings arose in her chest or somewhere, one after another; it was said the agony was awful. Duffham’s skill seemed to have gone a blackberrying, the other doctor’s also, for neither of the two could do anything for her, and the Court thought she would have died of it. Upon that, some relation of old Sterling’s was summoned from London—a great physician in great practice. He came in answer, and was liberal with his advice, telling them to try this and to try the other. But it did no good; and she only grew worse. When they were all in despair, seeing her increasing weakness and the prolonged pain, the woman who nursed her spoke of old Abel Crew; she had known him cure in these cases when the doctor could not; and the poor young lady, willing to catch at a straw, told them to send for Abel Crew. Abel Crew took a prepared plaster of herbs with him, green leaves of some sort, and applied it. That night the patient slept more easily than she had for weeks; and in a short time was well again.
But, skilful though he seemed to be in the science of herbs, as remedies for sickness and sores, Abel Crew never obtruded himself upon the ailing, or took money for his advice, or willingly interfered with the province of Duffham; he never would do it unless compelled in the interests of humanity. The patients he chiefly treated were the poor, those who could not have paid Duffham a coin worth thinking about. Duffham knew this. And, instead of being jealous of him, as some medical men might have been, or ridiculing him for a quack, Duffham liked and respected old Abel Crew. He was simple in his habits still: living chiefly upon bread and butter, with radishes or mustard and cress for a relish, cooking vegetables for his dinner, but rarely meat: and his drink was tea or spring water.
So that Abel Crew was rather a notable character amongst us; and when it was known abroad that two of his pills had caused the death of Mrs. Reed’s twins, there arose no end of a commotion.
It chanced that the same night this occurred, just about the time in fact that the unfortunate infants were taking down the pills under the superintendence of their mother and the blacksmith’s wife, Abel Crew met with an accident; though it was curious enough that it should be so. In taking a pan of boiling herbs off the fire, he let one of the handles slip out of his fingers; it sent the pan down on that side, spilled a lot of the stuff, and scalded his left foot on the instep. Therefore he was about the last person to hear of the calamity; for his door was not open as usual the following morning, and no one knocked to tell him of it.
Duffham was the first. Passing by on his morning rounds, the doctor heard the comments of the people, and it arrested him. It was so unusual a thing for Abel Crew not to be about, and for his door to be closed, that some of them had been arriving at a sensible conclusion—Abel Crew, knowing the mischief his pills had done, was shutting himself up within the house, unable to face his neighbours.
“Rubbish!” said Duffham. And he strode up the garden-path, knocked at the door with his cane, and entered. Abel had dressed, but was lying down on the bed again to rest his lame foot.
Duffham would have asked to look at it, but that he knew Abel Crew was as good at burns and scalds as he himself was. It had been doctored at once, and was now wrapped up in a handkerchief.
“The fire is nearly out of it,” said Abel, “but it must have rest; by to-night I shall be able to dress it with my healing-salve. I am much obliged to you for coming in, sir: though in truth I don’t know how you could have heard of the accident.”
“Ah! news flies,” said Duffham, evasively, knowing that he had not heard of the foot, or the neighbours either, and had come in for something altogether different. “What is this about the pills?”
“About the pills?” repeated Abel Crew, who had got up out of respect, and was putting on his coat. “What pills, sir?”
The doctor told him what had happened. Hester Reed had given one of his pills to each of her babies, and both had died of it. Abel Crew listened quietly; his face and his eyes fixed on Duffham.
“The children cannot have died of the pills,” said he, speaking as gently as you please. “Something else must have killed them.”
“According to Hester Reed’s account, nothing can have done it but the pills,” said Duffham. “The children had only taken their ordinary food throughout the day, and very little of that. George Reed came running to me in the night, but it was too late; one was dead before I got there. There could be no mistaking the children’s symptoms—that both were poisoned.”
“This is very strange,” exclaimed Abel, looking troubled. “By