OF VITAL MOTION. 133 



remainder seemed to be in the Rabicaliu dialect. All 

 trick or conspiracy was out of the question. Not 

 only had the young woman ever been an harmless, 

 simple creature, but she was evidently labouring 

 under a nervous fever. In the town in which she 

 had been resident for many years as a servant in 

 different families, no solution presented itself. The 

 young physician, however, determined to trace her 

 past life step by step, for the patient herself was 

 incapable of returning a rational answer. He at 

 length discovered a place where her parents had 

 lived; travelled thither, found them dead, but an 

 uncle surviving ; and from him learnt that the patient 

 bad been charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor 

 at nine years old, and had remained with him some 

 years, even till the old man's death. Of this pastor 

 the uncle knew nothing, but that he was a very good 

 man. With great diflSculty, and after much search, 

 our young medical philosopher discovered a niece of 

 the pastor's, who had lived with him as his house- 

 keeper, and had inherited his effects. She remem- 

 bered the girl ; related that her venerable uncle had 

 been too indulgent, and could not bear to hear the 

 girl scolded ; that she was willing to have kept her, 

 but that after her patron's death, the girl herself 

 refused to stay. Anxious inquiries were then, of 

 course, made concerning the pastor's habits ; and the 

 solution of the problem was soon obtained. For it 



