Page:The Inner House.djvu/100

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96
THE INNER HOUSE.

not tell who could have opened the door, or why. It has never been opened before."

Mildred shuddered. "It is thrown open for some mischief," she said; "we shall find out soon enough by whom."

Then they looked out through the door into the Garden of the College. The door faced a semicircular lawn run wild with rank grass never shorn; behind the lawn were trees; and the moonlight lay on all.

Suddenly the girls caught hands and shrank back into the door-way, for a tall form emerged from the trees and appeared upon the lawn, where he walked with hanging head and hands clasped behind his back.

"It is the Arch Physician!" Christine whispered.

"It is Harry Linister," Mildred murmured.

Then they retreated within and shut the door noiselessly; but they could not lock or fasten it.

"I can see that part of the Garden from a window in the Library," said Christine. "He walks there every morning and every evening. He is always alone. He always hangs his head, and he always looks fit to cry for trouble. What is the good of being Arch Physician, if you cannot have things done as you want?"

"My dear," said Mildred, "I am afraid you do not quite understand. In the old days—I mean not quite the dear old days, but in the time when people still discussed things and we had not been robbed of memory and of understanding—it was very well known that the Arch Physician was out-voted in the College by Grout and his Party."

"By Doctor Grout?"

"My dear, Grout was never a Doctor. He only calls himself Doctor. I remember when Grout was an ignorant man taken into Professor Linister's Laboratory to wash