Chapter 5

Doctor Grim [Endnote: 1] had the English faith in open air and daily
acquaintance with the weather, whatever it might be; and it was his
habit, not only to send the two children to play, for lack of a better
place, in the graveyard, but to take them himself on long rambles, of
which the vicinity of the town afforded a rich variety. It may be that
the Doctor's excursions had the wider scope, because both he and the
children were objects of curiosity in the town, and very much the
subject of its gossip: so that always, in its streets and lanes, the
people turned to gaze, and came to their windows and to the doors of
shops to see this grim, bearded figure, leading along the beautiful
children each by a hand, with a surly aspect like a bulldog. Their
remarks were possibly not intended to reach the ears of the party, but
certainly were not so cautiously whispered but they occasionally did do
so. The male remarks, indeed, generally died away in the throats that
uttered them; a circumstance that doubtless saved the utterer from some
very rough rejoinder at the hands of the Doctor, who had grown up in
the habit of a very ready and free recourse to his fists, which had a
way of doubling themselves up seemingly of their own accord. But the
shrill feminine voices sometimes sent their observations from window to
window without dread of any such repartee on the part of the subject of
them.

"There he goes, the old Spider-witch!" quoth one shrill woman, "with
those two poor babes that he has caught in his cobweb, and is going to
feed upon, poor little tender things! The bloody Englishman makes free
with the dead bodies of our friends and the living ones of our
children!"

"How red his nose is!" quoth another; "he has pulled at the brandy-
bottle pretty stoutly to-day, early as it is! Pretty habits those
children will learn, between the Devil in the shape of a great spider,
and this devilish fellow in his own shape! It were well that our
townsmen tarred and feathered the old British wizard!"

And, as he got further off, two or three little blackguard barefoot
boys shouted shrilly after him,--

"Doctor Grim, Doctor Grim,
The Devil wove a web for him!"

being a nonsensical couplet that had been made for the grim Doctor's
benefit, and was hooted in the streets, and under his own windows.
Hearing such remarks and insults, the Doctor would glare round at them
with red eyes, especially if the brandy-bottle had happened to be much
in request that day.

Indeed, poor Doctor Grim had met with a fortune which befalls many a
man with less cause than drew the public attention on this odd
humorist; for, dwelling in a town which was as yet but a larger