The Argosy — page 219: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i * 204 Abel Crew. returned to me, I should not venture to use them. I havea piece of furniture at home, sir, that I call my Pill-case. It has various drawers in it, each drawer being labelled with the sort of pills kept in it: camomile, dandelion,andsoon. Mr. Jones must be able to corroborate this.” Old Jones nodded. He had never seen nothing neater nor more exact in all his life, than the keeping o’ them there pills. He, Mr. Jones, had tumbled the drawerfuls indiscriminately into his bag, and so mixed mains “And they will be so much loss to me,” quietly observed Abel. “Tt does not matter.” “Were you brought up to the medical profession?” cried the Coroner “aig some of us thought he put the question in irony. ‘No, sir,” replied Abel, taking it to be serious. ‘I have learnt the healing art, as supplied by herbs and roots, and I know their value. Herbs will cure sometimes where the regular doctor fails. I have my- self cured cases with them that the surgeons could not cure ; cases that but for me, under God, might never have been cured in this world. I make no boast of it; anybody else might do as much who had made herbs their study, as I have.” ‘“‘ Are you making a fortune by it ?” went on the coroner. Abel shook his head. “I have a small income of my own, sir, and it is enough for my simple wants. What little money I make by my medicines, and honey, and that—it is not much—I find uses for in other ways. I indulge in a new book now and then; and there are many poor around who need a bit of help sometimes.” ““'You ‘read’ the stars, lam told, Abel Carew. What do you read in them ?” : “The same that I read, sir, in all other of nature’s works : God’s wonderful hand. His wisdom, His power, His omnipotent providence.” Perhaps the coroner thought to bring Abel to self-ridicule in his replies : if so, it was a mistake, for he seemed to be getting the worst of it himself. At any rate, he quitted the subject abruptly, brushed his energy up, and began talking to the jury. The drift of the conversation being, so far as the room could Leak it, that Crew’s pills, and only Crew’s, could have been the authors of the mischief to the two deceased children, whose bodies they were sitting upon, and that Crew must be committed to take his trial for man- slaughter. And, committed he would have been in a few minutes longer. “* Hester Reed’s evidence is so clear and positive that it quite puts aside any suspicion of the box of pills having been changed “The box had not my mark upon it, sir,” respectfully spoke Abel Crew, his tone anxious. | . ‘Don’t interrupt me,” rebuked the coroner sharply. “ As to the Gomicbooks.co my