CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE DOCTOR AND I BUILD A FURNACE.
My father was very silent as we walked swiftly back home, where he locked up the specimens we had obtained, and then after a few minutes' thought he signed to me to follow him and started for Ripplemouth.
About half-way there we met Doctor Chowne on his grey pony with Bob walking beside him, and directly after the doctor and my father were deep in conversation, leaving us boys together.
"What's the matter!" said Bob.

"Your father ill ?" "No," I replied; "I think it's about business." How well I can recollect Doctor Chowne! A little fierce-looking stoutish man, in drab breeches and top-boots, and a very old-fashioned cocked hat that looked terribly the worse for wear.

He used to have a light brown coat and waistcoat, with very large pockets that I always believed to be full of powders, and draughts, and pills on one side; and on the other of tooth-pincers, and knives, and saws for cutting off people's legs and arms.

Then, too, he wore a pigtail, his hair being drawn back and twisted up, and bound, and tied at the end with a greasy bit of ribbon.
But it was not like anybody else's pigtail, for, instead of hanging down decently over his coat collar, it cocked up so that it formed a regular curve, and looked as if it was a hook or a handle belonging to his cocked hat.
Before my father and he had been talking many minutes, the doctor turned sharply round in his saddle, with one hand resting on the pony's back.
He was going to speak, but his hand tickled the pony, which began to kick, whereupon Doctor Chowne, who looked rather red-faced and excited, stuck his spurs into the pony's ribs, and this made him rear and back towards the cliff edge, till the doctor dragged his head round so that he could see the sea, when he directly ran backwards and stood with his tail in the bank.
"Quiet, will you ?" cried the doctor, and, as the pony was not being tickled, he consented to stand still.

"Here, Bob!" said the doctor then.
"Yes, father." "Go home." "Go home, father! Mayn't I go along with Sep Duncan ?" "I said go home, sir," said the doctor sternly; and Bob turned short upon his heel, and I saw him go along the road cutting viciously at the ferns and knapweeds at every step.
"Come along, Sep," said my father, and I followed them as they walked slowly back towards our cottage, my father holding on by the pony's mane as he talked quickly to the doctor.
For my father and Doctor Chowne were great friends, having once served for a long time in the same ship together; and so it was that, when my father left the service and settled down to his quiet life at the little bay, Doctor Chowne bought the practice off the last doctor's widow, and settled himself, with his boy, at Ripplemouth.
As I say, the doctor and my father were very great friends, such great friends that when one day my father felt himself to be dangerously ill, and sent over in great haste for Doctor Chowne, that gentleman galloped over and examined him carefully, and then began to bully him and call him names.