Poor, poor, "pretty
Polly Hopkins!"
Cheering news of her, however, now and again came from the mountains. The
noted oculist, after his final visit to her, stopped over in Glaston to
report to Mrs. Royston the complete success of the treatment, knowing the
gratification the details would afford. He brought, too, the intelligence
that she was free of her old torture from rheumatism, which had been of
the muscular sort, resulting from exposure and deprivation, and had
yielded to the comforts of the trig, close house that Mrs. Royston had
built for her, and the abundance of warm furnishings and nutritious food,
a degree of luxury indeed which was hardly known elsewhere in the
Boundary. Her prosperity had evolved the equivocal advantage of restoring
her prestige as a sibyl, and she had entered upon a new lease of the
practice of the dark arts of fortune-telling and working charms and
spells. He gave a humorous account of her expressions of gratitude to him
for the restoration of her sight, which facetiousness Bayne, who chanced
to be present, perceived did not add to Mrs.
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