to make somewkat secure by supplementing its fastening with an iron bar that I happened to find on the bare earth which formed the floor of my apartments. A piece of old sheeting that flapped backwards and forwards with every breeze did duty as a window.
The interior was partitioned into two chambers by a dilapidated green curtain. The larger compartment was my work-room, and surgery, the furniture consisting of an unpainted table, two old chairs, and a couple of chests, one of which held my drugs and the other my books. If patients happened to flock in unusual numbers, as they would when a farmer brought his whole family of children, these chests were the best substitutes I could provide for the comfortable arm-chairs and lounges with which my European colleagues are accustomed to furnish their consulting-rooms. The second apartment, considerably smaller than the other, was my kitchen, dining-room, and bedroom all in one, and necessarily the place where, until I could afford to keep a servant, I was obliged to perform the most menial offices in my own behalf. The bed, in which during the cold weather I spent many a sleepless night, corresponded only too well with the rest of the furniture, the only article with the least pretension to respectability being a little case which I had brought with me from Europe.
My desire to get away into the interior grew stronger and stronger. However, before I could gain the means to start, I had first to pay off my
