“I wish you had kept your story to yourself, doctor,” she said, sharply.
“May I ask why, madam?”
“You have confirmed my son, sir, in his resolution to go to Saint Anthony’s Well.”
Mr. MacGlue quietly consulted his pocket almanac before he replied.
“It’s the full moon on the ninth of the month,” he said. “That gives Mr. Germaine some days of rest, ma’am, before he takes the journey. If he travels in his own comfortable carriage—whatever I may think, morally speaking, of his enterprise—I can’t say, medically speaking, that I believe it will do him much harm.”
“You know where Saint Anthony’s Well is?” I interposed.
“I must be mighty ignorant of Edinburgh not to know that,” replied the doctor.
“Is the Well in Edinburgh, then?”
“It’s just outside Edinburgh—looks down on it, as you may say. You follow the old street called the Canongate to the end. You turn to your right past the famous Palace of Holyrood; you cross the Park and the Drive, and take your way upward to the ruins of Anthony’s Chapel, on the shoulder of the hill—and there you are! There’s a high rock behind the chapel, and at the foot of it you will find the spring they call Anthony’s Well. It’s thought a pretty view by moonlight; and they tell me it’s no longer beset at night by bad characters, as it used to be in the old time.”
My mother, in graver and graver displeasure, rose to retire to the drawing-room.