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ROUND THE RED LAMP BEING FACTS AND FANCIES OF MEDICAL LIFE.............................1

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE............................................................................................................1

[Being an extract from a long and animated correspondence with a friend in America.]

I quite recognise the force of your objection that an invalid or a woman in weak health would get no good

from stories which attempt to treat some features of medical life with a certain amount of realism. If you deal

with this life at all, however, and if you are anxious to make your doctors something more than marionettes, it

is quite essential that you should paint the darker side, since it is that which is principally presented to the

surgeon or physician. He sees many beautiful things, it is true, fortitude and heroism, love and selfsacrifice;

but they are all called forth (as our nobler qualities are always called forth) by bitter sorrow and trial. One

Then why write of it, you may ask? If a subject is painful why treat it at all? I answer that it is the province of

fiction to treat painful things as well as cheerful ones. The story which wiles away a weary hour fulfils an

obviously good purpose, but not more so, I hold, than that which helps to emphasise the graver side of life. A

tale which may startle the reader out of his usual grooves of thought, and shocks him into seriousness, plays

the part of the alterative and tonic in medicine, bitter to the taste but bracing in the result. There are a few

stories in this little collection which might have such an effect, and I have so far shared in your feeling that I

have reserved them from serial publication. In bookform the reader can see that they are medical stories,

S.You ask about the Red Lamp. It is the usual sign of the general practitioner in England. 2.

My first interview with Dr. James Winter was under dramatic circumstances. It occurred at two in the

morning in the bedroom of an old country house. I kicked him twice on the white waistcoat and knocked off

his gold spectacles, while he with the aid of a female accomplice stifled my angry cries in a flannel petticoat

and thrust me into a warm bath. I am told that one of my parents, who happened to be present, remarked in a

whisper that there was nothing the matter with my lungs. I cannot recall how Dr. Winter looked at the time,

for I had other things to think of, but his description of my own appearance is far from flattering. A fluffy

head, a body like a trussed goose, very bandy legs, and feet with the soles turned inwardsthose are the

From this time onwards the epochs of my life were the periodical assaults which Dr. Winter made upon me.

He vaccinated me; he cut me for an abscess; he blistered me for mumps. It was a world of peace and he the

one dark cloud that threatened. But at last there came a time of real illnessa time when I lay for months

together inside my wickerworkbasket bed, and then it was that I learned that that hard face could relax, that

those countrymade creaking boots could steal very gently to a bedside, and that that rough voice could thin

And now the child is himself a medical man, and yet Dr. Winter is the same as ever. I can see no change

since first I can remember him, save that perhaps the brindled hair is a trifle whiter, and the huge shoulders a

little more bowed. He is a very tall man, though he loses a couple of inches from his stoop. That big back of

his has curved itself over sick beds until it has set in that shape. His face is of a walnut brown, and tells of

long winter drives over bleak country roads, with the wind and the rain in his teeth. It looks smooth at a little

distance, but as you approach him you see that it is shot with innumerable fine wrinkles like a last year's

apple. They are hardly to be seen when he is in repose; but when he laughs his face breaks like a starred

glass, and you realise then that though he looks old, he must be older than he looks.

How old that is I could never discover. I have often tried to find out, and have struck his stream as high up as

George IV and even the Regency, but without ever getting quite to the source. His mind must have been open

to impressions very early, but it must also have closed early, for the politics of the day have little interest for

him, while he is fiercely excited about questions which are entirely prehistoric. He shakes his head when he

speaks of the first Reform Bill and expresses grave doubts as to its wisdom, and I have heard him, when he

was warmed by a glass of wine, say bitter things about Robert Peel and his abandoning of the Corn Laws.

The death of that statesman brought the history of England to a definite close, and Dr. Winter refers to

But it was only when I had myself become a medical man that I was able to appreciate how entirely he is a

survival of a past generation. He had learned his medicine under that obsolete and forgotten system by which

a youth was apprenticed to a surgeon, in the days when the study of anatomy was often approached through a

violated grave. His views upon his own profession are even more reactionary than in politics. Fifty years have

brought him little and deprived him of less. Vaccination was well within the teaching of his youth, though I

think he has a secret preference for inoculation. Bleeding he would practise freely but for public opinion.

Chloroform he regards as a dangerous innovation, and he always clicks with his tongue when it is mentioned.

He has even been known to say vain things about Laennec, and to refer to the stethoscope as "a newfangled

French toy." He carries one in his hat out of deference to the expectations of his patients, but he is very hard

He reads, as a duty, his weekly medical paper, so that he has a general idea as to the advance of modern

science. He always persists in looking upon it as a huge and rather ludicrous experiment. The germ theory of

disease set him chuckling for a long time, and his favourite joke in the sick room was to say, "Shut the door

or the germs will be getting in." As to the Darwinian theory, it struck him as being the crowning joke of the

century. "The children in the nursery and the ancestors in the stable," he would cry, and laugh the tears out of

He is so very much behind the day that occasionally, as things move round in their usual circle, he finds

himself, to his bewilderment, in the front of the fashion. Dietetic treatment, for example, had been much in

vogue in his youth, and he has more practical knowledge of it than any one whom I have met. Massage, too,

was familiar to him when it was new to our generation. He had been trained also at a time when instruments

were in a rudimentary state, and when men learned to trust more to their own fingers. He has a model surgical

hand, muscular in the palm, tapering in the fingers, "with an eye at the end of each." I shall not easily forget

how Dr. Patterson and I cut Sir John Sirwell, the County Member, and were unable to find the stone. It was a

horrible moment. Both our careers were at stake. And then it was that Dr. Winter, whom we had asked out of

courtesy to be present, introduced into the wound a finger which seemed to our excited senses to be about

nine inches long, and hooked out the stone at the end of it. "It's always well to bring one in your

waistcoatpocket," said he with a chuckle, "but I suppose you youngsters are above all that."

We made him president of our branch of the British Medical Association, but he resigned after the first

meeting. "The young men are too much for me," he said. "I don't understand what they are talking about."

Yet his patients do very well. He has the healing touchthat magnetic thing which defies explanation or

analysis, but which is a very evident fact none the less. His mere presence leaves the patient with more

hopefulness and vitality. The sight of disease affects him as dust does a careful housewife. It makes him

angry and impatient. "Tut, tut, this will never do!" he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoo

Death out of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But when the intruder refuses to be dislodged,

when the blood moves more slowly and the eyes grow dimmer, then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail than

all the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his hand as if the presence of his bulk and vigour gives them

more courage to face the change; and that kindly, windbeaten face has been the last earthly impression which

When Dr. Patterson and Iboth of us young, energetic, and uptodatesettled in the district, we were

most cordially received by the old doctor, who would have been only too happy to be relieved of some of his

patients. The patients themselves, however, followed their own inclinationswhich is a reprehensible way

that patients haveso that we remained neglected, with our modern instruments and our latest alkaloids,

while he was serving out senna and calomel to all the countryside. We both of us loved the old fellow, but at

the same time, in the privacy of our own intimate conversations, we could not help commenting upon this

deplorable lack of judgment. "It's all very well for the poorer people," said Patterson. "But after all the

educated classes have a right to expect that their medical man will know the difference between a mitral

murmur and a bronchitic rale. It's the judicial frame of mind, not the sympathetic, which is the essential one."

I thoroughly agreed with Patterson in what he said. It happened, however, that very shortly afterwards the

epidemic of influenza broke out, and we were all worked to death. One morning I met Patterson on my round,

and found him looking rather pale and fagged out. He made the same remark about me. I was, in fact, feeling

far from well, and I lay upon the sofa all the afternoon with a splitting headache and pains in every joint. As

evening closed in, I could no longer disguise the fact that the scourge was upon me, and I felt that I should

have medical advice without delay. It was of Patterson, naturally, that I thought, but somehow the idea of him

had suddenly become repugnant to me. I thought of his cold, critical attitude, of his endless questions, of his

"Mrs. Hudson," said I to my housekeeper, would you kindly run along to old Dr. Winter and tell him that I

She was back with an answer presently. "Dr. Winter will come round in an hour or so, sir; but he has just

It was the first day of the winter session, and the third year's man was walking with the first year's man.

"Then this way, please. This is Rutherford's historic bar. A glass of sherry, please, for this gentleman. You

"Hum! Another glass of sherry for this gentleman. We are going to an operation now, you know."

The novice squared his shoulders and made a gallant attempt to look unconcerned.

"There's no sense in funking. If you don't go today, you must tomorrow. Better get it over at once. Feel

"One more glass of sherry, then. Now come on or we shall be late. I want you to be well in front."

"Oh, it is far better! What a drove of students! There are plenty of new men among them. You can tell them

easily enough, can't you? If they were going down to be operated upon themselves, they could not look

"Well, I was just the same myself. But the feeling soon wears off. You see a fellow with a face like plaster,

and before the week is out he is eating his lunch in the dissecting rooms. I'll tell you all about the case when

The students were pouring down the sloping street which led to the infirmaryeach with his little sheaf of

notebooks in his hand. There were pale, frightened lads, fresh from the high schools, and callous old

chronics, whose generation had passed on and left them. They swept in an unbroken, tumultuous stream from

the university gate to the hospital. The figures and gait of the men were young, but there was little youth in

most of their faces. Some looked as if they ate too littlea few as if they drank too much. Tall and short,

tweedcoated and black, roundshouldered, bespectacled, and slim, they crowded with clatter of feet and rattle

of sticks through the hospital gate. Now and again they thickened into two lines, as the carriage of a surgeon

"There's going to be a crowd at Archer's," whispered the senior man with suppressed excitement. "It is grand

to see him at work. I've seen him jab all round the aorta until it made me jumpy to watch him. This way, and

They passed under an archway and down a long, stoneflagged corridor, with drabcoloured doors on either

side, each marked with a number. Some of them were ajar, and the novice glanced into them with tingling

nerves. He was reassured to catch a glimpse of cheery fires, lines of whitecounterpaned beds, and a

profusion of coloured texts upon the wall. The corridor opened upon a small hall, with a fringe of poorly clad

people seated all round upon benches. A young man, with a pair of scissors stuck like a flower in his

buttonhole and a notebook in his hand, was passing from one to the other, whispering and writing.

"You should have been here yesterday," said the outpatient clerk, glancing up. "We had a regular field day.

A popliteal aneurism, a Colles' fracture, a spina bifida, a tropical abscess, and an elephantiasis. How's that for

"I'm sorry I missed it. But they'll come again, I suppose. What's up with the old gentleman?"

A broken workman was sitting in the shadow, rocking himself slowly to and fro, and groaning. A woman

beside him was trying to console him, patting his shoulder with a hand which was spotted over with curious

"It's a fine carbuncle," said the clerk, with the air of a connoisseur who describes his orchids to one who can

appreciate them. "It's on his back and the passage is draughty, so we must not look at it, must we, daddy?

Pemphigus," he added carelessly, pointing to the woman's disfigured hands. "Would you care to stop and take

"No, thank you. We are due at Archer's. Come on!" and they rejoined the throng which was hurrying to the

The tiers of horseshoe benches rising from the floor to the ceiling were already packed, and the novice as he

entered saw vague curving lines of faces in front of him, and heard the deep buzz of a hundred voices, and

sounds of laughter from somewhere up above him. His companion spied an opening on the second bench, and

Only a single row of heads intervened between them and the operating table. It was of unpainted deal, plain,

strong, and scrupulously clean. A sheet of brown waterproofing covered half of it, and beneath stood a large

tin tray full of sawdust. On the further side, in front of the window, there was a board which was strewed with

glittering instruments forceps, tenacula, saws, canulas, and trocars. A line of knives, with long, thin,

delicate blades, lay at one side. Two young men lounged in front of this, one threading needles, the other

"That's Peterson," whispered the senior, "the big, bald man in the front row. He's the skingrafting man, you

know. And that's Anthony Browne, who took a larynx out successfully last winter. And there's Murphy, the

"Nobodydressers. One has charge of the instruments and the other of the puffing Billy. It's Lister's

antiseptic spray, you know, and Archer's one of the carbolicacid men. Hayes is the leader of the

A flutter of interest passed through the closely packed benches as a woman in petticoat and bodice was led in

by two nurses. A red woolen shawl was draped over her head and round her neck. The face which looked out

from it was that of a woman in the prime of her years, but drawn with suffering, and of a peculiar beeswax

tint. Her head drooped as she walked, and one of the nurses, with her arm round her waist, was whispering

consolation in her ear. She gave a quick sideglance at the instrument table as she passed, but the nurses

"Cancer of the parotid. It's the devil of a case; extends right away back behind the carotids. There's hardly a

As he spoke, a small, brisk, irongrey man came striding into the room, rubbing his hands together as he

walked. He had a cleanshaven face, of the naval officer type, with large, bright eyes, and a firm, straight

mouth. Behind him came his big housesurgeon, with his gleaming pincenez, and a trail of dressers, who

"Gentlemen," cried the surgeon in a voice as hard and brisk as his manner, "we have here an interesting case

of tumour of the parotid, originally cartilaginous but now assuming malignant characteristics, and therefore

requiring excision. On to the table, nurse! Thank you! Chloroform, clerk! Thank you! You can take the shawl

The woman lay back upon the waterproofed pillow, and her murderous tumour lay revealed. In itself it was

a pretty thingivory white, with a mesh of blue veins, and curving gently from jaw to chest. But the lean,

yellow face and the stringy throat were in horrible contrast with the plumpness and sleekness of this

monstrous growth. The surgeon placed a hand on each side of it and pressed it slowly backwards and

"Adherent at one place, gentlemen," he cried. "The growth involves the carotids and jugulars, and passes

behind the ramus of the jaw, whither we must be prepared to follow it. It is impossible to say how deep our

dissection may carry us. Carbolic tray. Thank you! Dressings of carbolic gauze, if you please! Push the

chloroform, Mr. Johnson. Have the small saw ready in case it is necessary to remove the jaw."

The patient was moaning gently under the towel which had been placed over her face. She tried to raise her

arms and to draw up her knees, but two dressers restrained her. The heavy air was full of the penetrating

smells of carbolic acid and of chloroform. A muffled cry came from under the towel, and then a snatch of a

It mumbled off into a drone and stopped. The surgeon came across, still rubbing his hands, and spoke to an

"They won't have ten long. They'd do better to resign before they are driven to it."

"What's the use. They can't get past the committee even if they got a vote in the House. I was talking to"

"Talking to McDonaldbut I'll tell you about it presently." He walked back to the patient, who was

breathing in long, heavy gasps. "I propose," said he, passing his hand over the tumour in an almost caressing

fashion, "to make a free incision over the posterior border, and to take another forward at right angles to the

The novice, with eyes which were dilating with horror, saw the surgeon pick up the long, gleaming knife, dip

it into a tin basin, and balance it in his fingers as an artist might his brush. Then he saw him pinch up the skin

above the tumour with his left hand. At the sight his nerves, which had already been tried once or twice that

day, gave way utterly. His head swain round, and he felt that in another instant he might faint. He dared not

look at the patient. He dug his thumbs into his ears lest some scream should come to haunt him, and he fixed

his eyes rigidly upon the wooden ledge in front of him. One glance, one cry, would, he knew, break down the

shred of selfpossession which he still retained. He tried to think of cricket, of green fields and rippling

water, of his sisters at homeof anything rather than of what was going on so near him.

And yet somehow, even with his ears stopped up, sounds seemed to penetrate to him and to carry their own

tale. He heard, or thought that he heard, the long hissing of the carbolic engine. Then he was conscious of

some movement among the dressers. Were there groans, too, breaking in upon him, and some other sound,

some fluid sound, which was more dreadfully suggestive still? His mind would keep building up every step

of the operation, and fancy made it more ghastly than fact could have been. His nerves tingled and quivered.

Minute by minute the giddiness grew more marked, the numb, sickly feeling at his heart more distressing.

And then suddenly, with a groan, his head pitching forward, and his brow cracking sharply upon the narrow

When he came to himself, he was lying in the empty theatre, with his collar and shirt undone. The third year's

man was dabbing a wet sponge over his face, and a couple of grinning dressers were looking on.

"All right," cried the novice, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "I'm sorry to have made an ass of myself."

There was a pause, and then the three students burst out laughing. "Why, you juggins!" cried the senior man,

"there never was an operation at all! They found the patient didn't stand the chloroform well, and so the

whole thing was off. Archer has been giving us one of his racy lectures, and you fainted just in the middle of

It was a dull October morning, and heavy, rolling fogwreaths lay low over the wet grey roofs of the

Woolwich houses. Down in the long, bricklined streets all was sodden and greasy and cheerless. From the

high dark buildings of the arsenal came the whirr of many wheels, the thudding of weights, and the buzz and

babel of human toil. Beyond, the dwellings of the workingmen, smokestained and unlovely, radiated away

There were few folk in the streets, for the toilers had all been absorbed since break of day by the huge

smokespouting monster, which sucked in the manhood of the town, to belch it forth weary and

workstained every night. Little groups of children straggled to school, or loitered to peep through the single,

front windows at the big, giltedged Bibles, balanced upon small, threelegged tables, which were their usual

adornment. Stout women, with thick, red arms and dirty aprons, stood upon the whitened doorsteps, leaning

upon their brooms, and shrieking their morning greetings across the road. One stouter, redder, and dirtier than

the rest, had gathered a small knot of cronies around her and was talking energetically, with little shrill titters

"Old enough to know better!" she cried, in answer to an exclamation from one of the listeners. "If he hain't no

sense now, I 'specs he won't learn much on this side o'Jordan. Why, 'ow old is he at all? Blessed if I could

"Well, it ain't so hard to reckon," said a sharpfeatured palefaced woman with watery blue eyes. "He's been at

"That were a ter'ble long time agone," remarked a third. "It were afore I were born."

"It were fifteen year after the beginnin' of the century," cried a younger woman, who had stood leaning

against the wall, with a smile of superior knowledge upon her face. "My Bill was asaying so last Sabbath,

"It's eightyone now," said the original speaker, checking off the years upon her coarse red fingers, "and that

were fifteen. Ten and ten, and ten, and ten, and tenwhy, it's only sixtyandsix year, so he ain't so old after

"But he weren't a newborn babe at the battle, silly!" cried the young woman with a chuckle. "S'pose he were

"I've had 'bout enough of it," remarked the large woman gloomily. "Unless his young niece, or grandniece, or

whatever she is, come today, I'm off, and he can find some one else to do his work. Your own 'ome first,

"Listen to him now," she answered, with her hand half raised and her head turned slantwise towards the open

door. From the upper floor there came a shuffling, sliding sound with a sharp tapping of a stick. "There he go

back and forrards, doing what he call his sentry go. 'Arf the night through he's at that game, the silly old

juggins. At six o'clock this very mornin there he was beatin' with a stick at my door. `Turn out, guard!' he

cried, and a lot more jargon that I could make nothing of. Then what with his coughin' and 'awkin' and

"Missus Simpson, Missus Simpson!" cried a cracked and querulous voice from above.

"That's him!" she cried, nodding her head with an air of triumph. "He do go on somethin' scandalous. Yes,

"I feel as if I could shake his old bones up sometimes!" cried Mrs. Simpson viciously. "But who's for a 'arf of

The whole company were about to shuffle off to the public house, when a young girl stepped across the road

and touched the housekeeper timidly upon the arm. "I think that is No. 56 Arsenal View," she said. "Can you

The housekeeper looked critically at the newcomer. She was a girl of about twenty, broadfaced and comely,

with a turnedup nose and large, honest grey eyes. Her print dress, her straw hat, with its bunch of glaring

"You're Norah Brewster, I s'pose," said Mrs. Simpson, eyeing her up and down with no friendly gaze.

"And a good job too," cried the housekeeper, with a toss of her head. "It's about time that some of his own

folk took a turn at it, for I've had enough of it. There you are, young woman! In you go and make yourself at

home. There's tea in the caddy and bacon on the dresser, and the old man will be about you if you don't fetch

him his breakfast. I'll send for my things in the evenin'." With a nod she strolled off with her attendant

Thus left to her own devices, the country girl walked into the front room and took off her hat and jacket. It

was a lowroofed apartment with a sputtering fire upon which a small brass kettle was singing cheerily. A

stained cloth lay over half the table, with an empty brown teapot, a loaf of bread, and some coarse crockery.

Norah Brewster looked rapidly about her, and in an instant took over her new duties. Ere five minutes had

passed the tea was made, two slices of bacon were frizzling on the pan, the table was rearranged, the

antimacassars straightened over the sombre brown furniture, and the whole room had taken a new air of

comfort and neatness. This done she looked round curiously at the prints upon the walls. Over the fireplace,

in a small, square case, a brown medal caught her eye, hanging from a strip of purple ribbon. Beneath was a

slip of newspaper cutting. She stood on her tiptoes, with her fingers on the edge of the mantelpiece, and

craned her neck up to see it, glancing down from time to time at the bacon which simmered and hissed

"On Tuesday an interesting ceremony was performed at the barracks of the Third Regiment of Guards, when,

in the presence of the Prince Regent, Lord Hill, Lord Saltoun, and an assemblage which comprised beauty as

well as valour, a special medal was presented to Corporal Gregory Brewster, of Captain Haldane's flank

company, in recognition of his gallantry in the recent great battle in the Lowlands. It appears that on the

evermemorable 18th of June four companies of the Third Guards and of the Coldstreams, under the

command of Colonels Maitland and Byng, held the important farmhouse of Hougoumont at the right of the

British position. At a critical point of the action these troops found themselves short of powder. Seeing that

Generals Foy and Jerome Buonaparte were again massing their infantry for an attack on the position, Colonel

Byng dispatched Corporal Brewster to the rear to hasten up the reserve ammunition. Brewster came upon two

powder tumbrils of the Nassau division, and succeeded, after menacing the drivers with his musket, in

inducing them to convey their powder to Hougoumont. In his absence, however, the hedges surrounding the

position had been set on fire by a howitzer battery of the French, and the passage of the carts full of powder

became a most hazardous matter. The first tumbril exploded, blowing the driver to fragments. Daunted by the

fate of his comrade, the second driver turned his horses, but Corporal Brewster, springing upon his seat,

hurled the man down, and urging the powder cart through the flames, succeeded in forcing his way to his

companions. To this gallant deed may be directly attributed the success of the British arms, for without

powder it would have been impossible to have held Hougoumont, and the Duke of Wellington had repeatedly

declared that had Hougoumont fallen, as well as La Haye Sainte, he would have found it impossible to have

held his ground. Long may the heroic Brewster live to treasure the medal which he has so bravely won, and

to look back with pride to the day when, in the presence of his comrades, he received this tribute to his valour

The reading of this old cutting increased in the girl's mind the veneration which she had always had for her

warrior kinsman. From her infancy he had been her hero, and she remembered how her father used to speak

of his courage and his strength, how he could strike down a bullock with a blow of his fist and carry a fat

sheep under either arm. True, she had never seen him, but a rude painting at home which depicted a

squarefaced, clean shaven, stalwart man with a great bearskin cap, rose ever before her memory when she

She was still gazing at the brown medal and wondering what the "Dulce et decorum est" might mean, which

was inscribed upon the edge, when there came a sudden tapping and shuffling upon the stair, and there at the

But could this indeed be he? Where was the martial air, the flashing eye, the warrior face which she had

pictured? There, framed in the doorway, was a huge twisted old man, gaunt and puckered, with twitching

hands and shuffling, purposeless feet. A cloud of fluffy white hair, a redveined nose, two thick tufts of

eyebrow and a pair of dimly questioning, watery blue eyesthese were what met her gaze. He leaned

forward upon a stick, while his shoulders rose and fell with his crackling, rasping breathing.

"I want my morning rations," he crooned, as he stumped forward to his chair. "The cold nips me without 'em.

See to my fingers!" He held out his distorted hands, all blue at the tips, wrinkled and gnarled, with huge,

"It's nigh ready," answered the girl, gazing at him with wonder in her eyes. "Don't you know who I am,

"Rum is warm," mumbled the old man, rocking to and fro in his chair, "and schnapps is warm, and there's 'eat

"You can speak out, lass. Seems to me folk's voices isn't as loud as they used."

"I'm Norah Brewster, uncle. I'm your grandniece come down from Essex way to live with you."

"You'll be brother Jarge's girl! Lor, to think o' little Jarge having a girl!" He chuckled hoarsely to himself, and

"I am the daughter of your brother George's son," said she, as she turned the bacon.

"Lor, but little Jarge was a rare un!" he continued. "Eh, by Jimini, there was no chousing Jarge. He's got a

bull pup o' mine that I gave him when I took the bounty. You've heard him speak of it, likely?"

"Why, grandpa George has been dead this twenty year," said she, pouring out the tea.

"Well, it was a bootiful pupaye, a wellbred un, by Jimini! I'm cold for lack o' my rations. Rum is good,

He breathed heavily while he devoured his food. "It's a middlin' goodish way you've come," said he at last.

"Lor, now, think o' that! You ain't afeard o' those newfangled things! By Jimini, to think of you comin' by

There was silence for some minutes while Norah sat stirring her tea and glancing sideways at the bluish lips

"You must have seen a deal o' life, uncle," said she. "It must seem a long, long time to you!"

"Not so very long neither. I'm ninety, come Candlemas; but it don't seem long since I took the bounty. And

that battle, it might have been yesterday. Eh, but I get a power o' good from my rations!" He did indeed look

less worn and colourless than when she first saw him. His face was flushed and his back more erect.

"Ah, it was a great day for me! A great day! The Regent was there, and a fine body of a man too! `The

ridgment is proud of you,' says he. `And I'm proud of the ridgment,' say I. `A damned good answer too!' says

he to Lord Hill, and they both bu'st out alaughin'. But what be you apeepin' out o' the window for?"

"Oh, uncle, here's a regiment of soldiers coming down the street with the band playing in front of them."

"A ridgment, eh? Where be my glasses? Lor, but I can hear the band, as plain as plain! Here's the pioneers an'

the drummajor! What be their number, lass?" His eyes were shining and his bony yellow fingers, like the

"They don't seem to have no number, uncle. They've something wrote on their shoulders. Oxfordshire, I think

"Ah, yes!" he growled. "I heard as they'd dropped the numbers and given them newfangled names. There they

go, by Jimini! They're young mostly, but they hain't forgot how to march. They have the swingaye, I'll say

that for them. They've got the swing." He gazed after them until the last files had turned the corner and the

"Come in, doctor! Yes, I'm better. But there's a deal o' bubbling in my chest. It's all them toobes. If I could

but cut the phlegm, I'd be right. Can't you give me something to cut the phlegm?"

The doctor, a gravefaced young man, put his fingers to the furrowed, bluecorded wrist.

"You must be careful," he said. "You must take no liberties." The thin tide of life seemed to thrill rather than

"I've got brother Jarge's girl to look after me now. She'll see I don't break barracks or do what I hadn't ought

"Why, with them soldiers. You saw them pass, doctoreh? They'd forgot their stocks. Not one on 'em had

his stock on." He croaked and chuckled for a long time over his discovery. "It wouldn't ha' done for the

The doctor smiled. "Well, you are doing very well," said he. "I'll look in once a week or so, and see how you

"He is very weak," he whispered. "If you find him failing you must send for me."

"Ninety years ails him. His arteries are pipes of lime. His heart is shrunken and flabby. The man is worn out."

Norah stood watching the brisk figure of the young doctor, and pondering over these new responsibilities

which had come upon her. When she turned a tall, brownfaced artilleryman, with the three gold chevrons of

"Goodmorning, miss," said he, raising one thick finger to his jaunty, yellowbanded cap. "I b'lieve there's

an old gentleman lives here of the name of Brewster, who was engaged in the battle o' Waterloo?"

"It's my granduncle, sir," said Norah, casting down her eyes before the keen, critical gaze of the young

"Could I have a word with him, miss? I'll call again if it don't chance to be convenient."

"I am sure that he would be very glad to see you, sir. He's in here, if you'll step in. Uncle, here's a gentleman

"Proud to see you, sirproud and glad, sir," cried the sergeant, taking three steps forward into the room, and

grounding his carbine while he raised his hand, palm forwards, in a salute. Norah stood by the door, with her

mouth and eyes open, wondering if her granduncle had ever, in his prime, looked like this magnificent

creature, and whether he, in his turn, would ever come to resemble her granduncle.

The old man blinked up at his visitor, and shook his head slowly. "Sit ye down, sergeant," said he, pointing

with his stick to a chair. "You're full young for the stripes. Lordy, it's easier to get three now than one in my

day. Gunners were old soldiers then and the grey hairs came quicker than the three stripes."

"I am eight years' service, sir," cried the sergeant. "Macdonald is my nameSergeant Macdonald, of H

Battery, Southern Artillery Division. I have called as the spokesman of my mates at the gunner's barracks to

Old Brewster chuckled and rubbed his bony hands. "That were what the Regent said," he cried. "`The

ridgment is proud of ye,' says he. `And I am proud of the ridgment,' says I. `And a damned good answer too,'

"The noncommissioned mess would be proud and honoured to see you, sir," said Sergeant Macdonald; "and

if you could step as far you'll always find a pipe o' baccy and a glass o' grog awaitin' you."

The old man laughed until he coughed. "Like to see me, would they? The dogs!" said he. "Well, well, when

the warm weather comes again I'll maybe drop in. Too grand for a canteen, eh? Got your mess just the same

"The line?" cried the old man, with shrill scorn. "Never wore a shako in my life. I am a guardsman, I am.

Served in the Third Guardsthe same they call now the Scots Guards. Lordy, but they have all marched

awayevery man of themfrom old Colonel Byng down to the drummer boys, and here am I a

stragglerthat's what I am, sergeant, a straggler! I'm here when I ought to be there. But it ain't my fault

"We've all got to muster there," answered the sergeant. "Won't you try my baccy, sir?" handing over a

Old Brewster drew a blackened clay pipe from his pocket, and began to stuff the tobacco into the bowl. In an

instant it slipped through his fingers, and was broken to pieces on the floor. His lip quivered, his nose

puckered up, and he began crying with the long, helpless sobs of a child. "I've broke my pipe," he cried.

"Don't, uncle; oh, don't!" cried Norah, bending over him, and patting his white head as one soothes a baby. "It

"Don't you fret yourself, sir," said the sergeant. "'Ere's a wooden pipe with an amber mouth, if you'll do me

"Jimini!" cried he, his smiles breaking in an instant through his tears. "It's a fine pipe. See to my new pipe,

Norah. I lay that Jarge never had a pipe like that. You've got your firelock there, sergeant?"

"Let me have the feel of it. Lordy, but it seems like old times to have one's hand on a musket. What's the

manual, sergeant, eh? Cock your firelocklook to your primingpresent your firelockeh, sergeant? Oh,

"That's all right, sir," cried the gunner laughing. "You pressed on the lever and opened the breechpiece.

"Load 'em at the wrong end! Well, well, to think o' that! And no ramrod neither! I've heard tell of it, but I

never believed it afore. Ah! it won't come up to brown Bess. When there's work to be done, you mark my

"By the Lord, sir!" cried the sergeant hotly, "they need some change out in South Africa now. I see by this

mornin's paper that the Government has knuckled under to these Boers. They're hot about it at the noncom.

"Eheh," croaked old Brewster. "By Jimini! it wouldn't ha' done for the Dook; the Dook would ha' had a

"Ah, that he would, sir!" cried the sergeant; and God send us another like him. But I've wearied you enough

for one sitting. I'll look in again, and I'll bring a comrade or two with me, if I may, for there isn't one but

So, with another salute to the veteran and a gleam of white teeth at Norah, the big gunner withdrew, leaving a

memory of blue cloth and of gold braid behind him. Many days had not passed, however, before he was back

again, and during all the long winter he was a frequent visitor at Arsenal View. There came a time, at last,

when it might be doubted to which of the two occupants his visits were directed, nor was it hard to say by

which he was most anxiously awaited. He brought others with him; and soon, through all the lines, a

pilgrimage to Daddy Brewster's came to be looked upon as the proper thing to do. Gunners and sappers,

linesmen and dragoons, came bowing and bobbing into the little parlour, with clatter of side arms and clink of

spurs, stretching their long legs across the patchwork rug, and hunting in the front of their tunics for the screw

It was a deadly cold winter, with six weeks on end of snow on the ground, and Norah had a hard task to keep

the life in that timeworn body. There were times when his mind would leave him, and when, save an animal

outcry when the hour of his meals came round, no word would fall from him. He was a whitehaired child,

with all a child's troubles and emotions. As the warm weather came once more, however, and the green buds

peeped forth again upon the trees, the blood thawed in his veins, and he would even drag himself as far as the

"It do hearten me up so," he said one morning, as he glowed in the hot May sun. "It's a job to keep back the

flies, though. They get owdacious in this weather, and they do plague me cruel."

"Eh, but it's fine! This sunshine makes me think o' the glory to come. You might read me a bit o' the Bible,

"Aye, keep to the wars! Give me the Old Testament for choice. There's more taste to it, to my mind. When

parson comes he wants to get off to something else; but it's Joshua or nothing with me. Them Israelites was

The old corporal knocked his stick irritably upon the ground. "I tell ye it ain't, gal. I asked parson."

"He said there was to be a last fight. He even gave it a name, he did. The battle of ArmArm"

"Aye, that's the name parson said. I 'specs the Third Guards'll be there. And the Dookthe Dook'll have a

An elderly, greywhiskered gentleman had been walking down the street, glancing up at the numbers of the

"You are the same Brewster, as I understand, who is on the roll of the Scots Guards as having been present at

"I am that man, sir, though we called it the Third Guards in those days. It was a fine ridgment, and they only

"Tut, tut! they'll have to wait years for that," said the gentleman heartily. "But I am the colonel of the Scots

Old Gregory Brewster was up in an instant, with his hand to his rabbitskin cap. "God bless me!" he cried,

"Hadn't the gentleman better come in?" suggested the practical Norah from behind the door.

"Surely, sir, surely; walk in, sir, if I may be so bold." In his excitement he had forgotten his stick, and as he

led the way into the parlour his knees tottered, and he threw out his hands. In an instant the colonel had

"Thank ye, sir; I was near gone that time. But, Lordy I why, I can scarce believe it. To think of me the

corporal of the flank company and you the colonel of the battalion! How things come round, to be sure!"

"Why, we are very proud of you in London," said the colonel. "And so you are actually one of the men who

held Hougoumont." He looked at the bony, trembling hands, with their huge, knotted knuckles, the stringy

throat, and the heaving, rounded shoulders. Could this, indeed, be the last of that band of heroes? Then he

glanced at the halffilled phials, the blue liniment bottles, the longspouted kettle, and the sordid details of

the sick room. "Better, surely, had he died under the blazing rafters of the Belgian farmhouse," thought the

"Thank ye, sir. I have a good deal o' trouble with my toobesa deal o' trouble. You wouldn't think the job it

is to cut the phlegm. And I need my rations. I gets cold without 'em. And the flies! I ain't strong enough to

"Oh, there ain't nothing amiss there. Why, sir, I could give you the name of every man in Captain Haldane's

"Why, I sees it all afore me every time I shuts my eyes. Lordy, sir, you wouldn't hardly believe how clear it is

to me. There's our line from the paregoric bottle right along to the snuff box. D'ye see? Well, then, the pill

box is for Hougoumont on the rightwhere we wasand Norah's thimble for La Haye Sainte. There it is,

all right, sir; and here were our guns, and here behind the reserves and the Belgians. Ach, them Belgians!" He

spat furiously into the fire. "Then here's the French, where my pipe lies; and over here, where I put my baccy

pouch, was the Proosians acomin' up on our left flank. Jimini, but it was a glad sight to see the smoke of

"And what was it that struck you most now in connection with the whole affair?" asked the colonel.

"I lost three halfcrowns over it, I did," crooned old Brewster. "I shouldn't wonder if I was never to get that

money now. I lent 'em to Jabez Smith, my rear rank man, in Brussels. `Only till payday, Grig,' says he. By

Gosh! he was stuck by a lancer at Quatre Bras, and me with not so much as a slip o' paper to prove the debt!

The colonel rose from his chair laughing. "The officers of the Guards want you to buy yourself some little

trifle which may add to your comfort," he said. "It is not from me, so you need not thank me." He took up the

"Thank ye kindly, sir. But there's one favour that I would like to ask you, colonel."

"If I'm called, colonel, you won't grudge me a flag and a firing party? I'm not a civilian; I'm a

"All right, my man, I'll see to it," said the colonel. "Goodbye; I hope to have nothing but good news from

"A kind gentleman, Norah," croaked old Brewster, as they saw him walk past the window; "but, Lordy, he

It was on the very next day that the old corporal took a sudden change for the worse. Even the golden

sunlight streaming through the window seemed unable to warm that withered frame. The doctor came and

shook his head in silence. All day the man lay with only his puffing blue lips and the twitching of his scraggy

neck to show that he still held the breath of life. Norah and Sergeant Macdonald had sat by him in the

afternoon, but he had shown no consciousness of their presence. He lay peacefully, his eyes half closed, his

They had left him for an instant and were sitting in the front room, where Norah was preparing tea, when of a

sudden they heard a shout that rang through the house. Loud and clear and swelling, it pealed in their earsa

voice full of strength and energy and fiery passion. "The Guards need powder!" it cried; and yet again, "The

The sergeant sprang from his chair and rushed in, followed by the trembling Norah. There was the old man

standing up, his blue eyes sparkling, his white hair bristling, his whole figure towering and expanding, with

eagle head and glance of fire. "The Guards need powder!" he thundered once again, "and, by God, they shall

have it!" He threw up his long arms, and sank back with a groan into his chair. The sergeant stooped over

The sergeant turned away. "I think," said he, "that the Third Guards have a full muster now."

Scudamore Lane, sloping down riverwards from just behind the Monument, lies at night in the shadow of two

black and monstrous walls which loom high above the glimmer of the scattered gas lamps. The footpaths are

narrow, and the causeway is paved with rounded cobblestones, so that the endless drays roar along it like

breaking waves. A few oldfashioned houses lie scattered among the business premises, and in one of these,

halfway down on the lefthand side, Dr. Horace Selby conducts his large practice. It is a singular street for

so big a man; but a specialist who has an European reputation can afford to live where he likes. In his

particular branch, too, patients do not always regard seclusion as a disadvantage.

It was only ten o'clock. The dull roar of the traffic which converged all day upon London Bridge had died

away now to a mere confused murmur. It was raining heavily, and the gas shone dimly through the streaked

and dripping glass, throwing little circles upon the glistening cobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of

the rain, the thin swish of its fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and gurgle down the two steep

gutters and through the sewer grating. There was only one figure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It

He had just rung and was waiting for an answer. The fanlight beat full upon the gleaming shoulders of his

waterproof and upon his upturned features. It was a wan, sensitive, clearcut face, with some subtle,

nameless peculiarity in its expression, something of the startled horse in the whiterimmed eye, something

too of the helpless child in the drawn cheek and the weakening of the lower lip. The manservant knew the

stranger as a patient at a bare glance at those frightened eyes. Such a look had been seen at that door many

"He has had a few friends to dinner, sir. He does not like to be disturbed outside his usual hours, sir."

"Tell him that I MUST see him. Tell him that it is of the very first importance. Here is my card." He fumbled

with his trembling fingers in trying to draw one from his case. "Sir Francis Norton is the name. Tell him that

"Yes, sir." The butler closed his fingers upon the card and the halfsovereign which accompanied it. "Better

hang your coat up here in the hall. It is very wet. Now if you will wait here in the consultingroom, I have no

It was a large and lofty room in which the young baronet found himself. The carpet was so soft and thick that

his feet made no sound as he walked across it. The two gas jets were turned only halfway up, and the dim

light with the faint aromatic smell which filled the air had a vaguely religious suggestion. He sat down in a

shining leather armchair by the smouldering fire and looked gloomily about him. Two sides of the room were

taken up with books, fat and sombre, with broad gold lettering upon their backs. Beside him was the high,

oldfashioned mantelpiece of white marblethe top of it strewed with cotton wadding and bandages,

graduated measures, and little bottles. There was one with a broad neck just above him containing bluestone,

and another narrower one with what looked like the ruins of a broken pipestem and "Caustic" outside upon a

red label. Thermometers, hypodermic syringes bistouries and spatulas were scattered about both on the

mantelpiece and on the central table on either side of the sloping desk. On the same table, to the right, stood

copies of the five books which Dr. Horace Selby had written upon the subject with which his name is

peculiarly associated, while on the left, on the top of a red medical directory, lay a huge glass model of a

human eye the size of a turnip, which opened down the centre to expose the lens and double chamber within.

Sir Francis Norton had never been remarkable for his powers of observation, and yet he found himself

watching these trifles with the keenest attention. Even the corrosion of the cork of an acid bottle caught his

eye, and he wondered that the doctor did not use glass stoppers. Tiny scratches where the light glinted off

from the table, little stains upon the leather of the desk, chemical formulae scribbled upon the labels of the

phialsnothing was too slight to arrest his attention. And his sense of hearing was equally alert. The heavy

ticking of the solemn black clock above the mantelpiece struck quite painfully upon his ears. Yet in spite of

it, and in spite also of the thick, oldfashioned wooden partition, he could hear voices of men talking in the

next room, and could even catch scraps of their conversation. "Second hand was bound to take it." "Why, you

"How could I play the queen when I knew that the ace was against me?" The phrases came in little spurts

falling back into the dull murmur of conversation. And then suddenly he heard the creaking of a door and a

step in the hall, and knew with a tingling mixture of impatience and horror that the crisis of his life was at

Dr. Horace Selby was a large, portly man with an imposing presence. His nose and chin were bold and

pronounced, yet his features were puffy, a combination which would blend more freely with the wig and

cravat of the early Georges than with the closecropped hair and black frockcoat of the end of the

nineteenth century. He was clean shaven, for his mouth was too good to coverlarge, flexible, and sensitive,

with a kindly human softening at either corner which with his brown sympathetic eyes had drawn out many a

shamestruck sinner's secret. Two masterful little bushy sidewhiskers bristled out from under his ears

spindling away upwards to merge in the thick curves of his brindled hair. To his patients there was something

reassuring in the mere bulk and dignity of the man. A high and easy bearing in medicine as in war bears with

it a hint of victories in the past, and a promise of others to come. Dr. Horace Selby's face was a consolation,

and so too were the large, white, soothing hands, one of which he held out to his visitor.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting. It is a conflict of duties, you perceivea host's to his guests and an

adviser's to his patient. But now I am entirely at your disposal, Sir Francis. But dear me, you are very cold."

"And you are trembling all over. Tut, tut, this will never do! This miserable night has chilled you. Perhaps

"No, thank you. I would really rather not. And it is not the night which has chilled me. I am frightened,

The doctor halfturned in his chair, and he patted the arch of the young man's knee, as he might the neck of a

"What then?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the pale face with the startled eyes.

Twice the young man parted his lips. Then he stooped with a sudden gesture, and turning up the right leg of

his trousers he pulled down his sock and thrust forward his shin. The doctor made a clicking noise with his

The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb down the line of his chin. "Can you account for

The patient sprang from his chair. "So help me God!" he cried, "I have nothing in my life with which to

reproach myself. Do you think that I would be such a fool as to come here and tell you lies. Once for all, I

have nothing to regret." He was a pitiful, halftragic and halfgrotesque figure, as he stood with one trouser

leg rolled to the knee, and that ever present horror still lurking in his eyes. A burst of merriment came from

"Sit down," said the doctor abruptly, "your assurance is quite sufficient." He stooped and ran his finger down

the line of the young man's shin, raising it at one point. "Hum, serpiginous," he murmured, shaking his head.

"Let me see your teeth." He glanced at them, and again made the gentle, clicking sound of sympathy and

"Now your eye." He lit a lamp at the patient's elbow, and holding a small crystal lens to concentrate the light,

he threw it obliquely upon the patient's eye. As he did so a glow of pleasure came over his large expressive

face, a flush of such enthusiasm as the botanist feels when he packs the rare plant into his tin knapsack, or the

astronomer when the longsought comet first swims into the field of his telescope.

"This is very typicalvery typical indeed," he murmured, turning to his desk and jotting down a few

memoranda upon a sheet of paper. "Curiously enough, I am writing a monograph upon the subject. It is

singular that you should have been able to furnish so wellmarked a case." He had so forgotten the patient in

his symptom, that he had assumed an almost congratulatory air towards its possessor. He reverted to human

"My dear sir, there is no occasion for us to go into strictly professional details together," said he soothingly.

"If, for example, I were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be the wiser? There are

indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary

The young baronet sank back in his chair, and his chin fell forwards upon his chest. The doctor sprang to a

sidetable and poured out half a glass of liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A little fleck of

"Perhaps I spoke a little abruptly," said the doctor, "but you must have known the nature of your complaint.

"God help me, I suspected it; but only today when my leg grew bad. My father had a leg like this."

"No, from my grandfather. You have heard of Sir Rupert Norton, the great Corinthian?"

The doctor was a man of wide reading with a retentive, memory. The name brought back instantly to him the

remembrance of the sinister reputation of its ownera notorious buck of the thirtieswho had gambled and

duelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery, until even the vile set with whom he consorted had

shrunk away from him in horror, and left him to a sinister old age with the barmaid wife whom he had

married in some drunken frolic. As he looked at the young man still leaning back in the leather chair, there

seemed for the instant to flicker up behind him some vague presentiment of that foul old dandy with his

dangling seals, manywreathed scarf, and dark satyric face. What was he now? An armful of bones in a

mouldy box. But his deeds they were living and rotting the blood in the veins of an innocent man.

"I see that you have heard of him," said the young baronet. "He died horribly, I have been told; but not more

horribly than he had lived. My father was his only son. He was a studious man, fond of books and canaries

"He wore gloves in the house. That was the first thing I can remember. And then it was his throat. And then

his legs. He used to ask me so often about my own health, and I thought him so fussy, for how could I tell

what the meaning of it was. He was always watching mealways with a sidelong eye fixed upon me. Now,

"Well, well, it is a sad case, and very typical of many which come in my way. You are no lonely sufferer, Sir

"But where is the justice of it, doctor?" cried the young man, springing from his chair and pacing up and

down the consultingroom. "If I were heir to my grandfather's sins as well as to their results, I could

understand it, but I am of my father's type. I love all that is gentle and beautifulmusic and poetry and art.

The coarse and animal is abhorrent to me. Ask any of my friends and they would tell you that. And now that

this vile, loathsome thingach, I am polluted to the marrow, soaked in abomination! And why? Haven't I a

right to ask why? Did I do it? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And look at me now, blighted and

blasted, just as life was at its sweetest. Talk about the sins of the fatherhow about the sins of the Creator?"

He shook his two clinched hands in the airthe poor impotent atom with his pinpoint of brain caught in the

The doctor rose and placing his hands upon his shoulders he pressed him back into his chair once more.

"There, there, my dear lad," said he; "you must not excite yourself. You are trembling all over. Your nerves

cannot stand it. We must take these great questions upon trust. What are we, after all? Halfevolved creatures

in a transition stage, nearer perhaps to the Medusa on the one side than to perfected humanity on the other.

With half a complete brain we can't expect to understand the whole of a complete fact, can we, now? It is all

very dim and dark, no doubt; but I think that Pope's famous couplet sums up the whole matter, and from my

But the young baronet gave a cry of impatience and disgust. "Words, words, words! You can sit comfortably

there in your chair and say themand think them too, no doubt. You've had your life, but I've never had

mine. You've healthy blood in your veins; mine is putrid. And yet I am as innocent as you. What would

words do for you if you were in this chair and I in that? Ah, it's such a mockery and a makebelieve! Don't

think me rude, though, doctor. I don't mean to be that. I only say that it is impossible for you or any other

man to realise it. But I've a question to ask you, doctor. It's one on which my whole life must depend." He

"Do you thinkdo you think the poison has spent itself on me? Do you think that if I had children they

"I can only give one answer to that. `The third and fourth generation,' says the trite old text. You may in time

eliminate it from your system, but many years must pass before you can think of marriage."

It was the doctor's turn to be thrilled with horror. There were not many situations which would yield such a

sensation to his seasoned nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of the cardtable broke in upon them

again. "We had a double ruff if you had returned a heart." "I was bound to clear the trumps." They were hot

"You forget that I have only learned how I stand today." He put his two hands to his temples and pressed

them convulsively. "You are a man of the world, Dr. Selby. You have seen or heard of such things before.

Give me some advice. I'm in your hands. It is all very sudden and horrible, and I don't think I am strong

The doctor's heavy brows thickened into two straight lines, and he bit his nails in perplexity.

The young man took out a pocketbook and drew from it a small photograph, holding it out towards the

"It is very hard on you, no doubt. I can appreciate it more now that I have seen that. But there is no alternative

"But this is madness, doctormadness, I tell you. No, I won't raise my voice. I forgot myself. But realise it,

man. I am to be married on Tuesday. This coming Tuesday, you understand. And all the world knows it. How

"You would have me simply write brutally and break the engagement at the last moment without a reason. I

"I had a patient once who found himself in a somewhat similar situation some years ago," said the doctor

thoughtfully. "His device was a singular one. He deliberately committed a penal offence, and so compelled

The young baronet shook his head. "My personal honour is as yet unstained," said he. "I have little else left,

"Then you could buy some. Tomorrow morning would do. A thousand mining shares would be enough.

Then you might write to say that urgent business affairs have compelled you to start at an hour's notice to

"Well, that would be possible. Yes, certainly, it would be possible. But think of her position. The house full

of wedding presentsguests coming from a distance. It is awful. And you say that there is no alternative."

"Well, then, I might write it now, and start tomorrow eh? Perhaps you would let me use your desk. Thank

you. I am so sorry to keep you from your guests so long. But I won't be a moment now."

He wrote an abrupt note of a few lines. Then with a sudden impulse he tore it to shreds and flung it into the

"No, I can't sit down and tell her a lie, doctor," he said rising. "We must find some other way out of this. I

will think it over and let you know my decision. You must allow me to double your fee as I have taken such

an unconscionable time. Now goodbye, and thank you a thousand times for your sympathy and advice."

"Why, dear me, you haven't even got your prescription yet. This is the mixture, and I should recommend one

of these powders every morning, and the chemist will put all directions upon the ointment box. You are

placed in a cruel situation, but I trust that these may be but passing clouds. When may I hope to hear from

"Very good. How the rain is splashing in the street! You have your waterproof there. You will need it.

He opened the door. A gust of cold, damp air swept into the hall. And yet the doctor stood for a minute or

more watching the lonely figure which passed slowly through the yellow splotches of the gas lamps, and into

the broad bars of darkness between. It was but his own shadow which trailed up the wall as he passed the

lights, and yet it looked to the doctor's eye as though some huge and sombre figure walked by a manikin's

Dr. Horace Selby heard again of his patient next morning, and rather earlier than he had expected. A

paragraph in the Daily News caused him to push away his breakfast untasted, and turned him sick and faint

while he read it. "A Deplorable Accident," it was headed, and it ran in this way:

"A fatal accident of a peculiarly painful character is reported from King William Street. About eleven o'clock

last night a young man was observed while endeavouring to get out of the way of a hansom to slip and fall

under the wheels of a heavy, twohorse dray. On being picked up his injuries were found to be of the most

shocking character, and he expired while being conveyed to the hospital. An examination of his pocketbook

and cardcase shows beyond any question that the deceased is none other than Sir Francis Norton, of Deane

Park, who has only within the last year come into the baronetcy. The accident is made the more deplorable as

the deceased, who was only just of age, was on the eve of being married to a young lady belonging to one of

the oldest families in the South. With his wealth and his talents the ball of fortune was at his feet, and his

many friends will be deeply grieved to know that his promising career has been cut short in so sudden and

The visitor looked somewhat astonished at having the door opened to him by the master of the house.

The doctor, a pale, nervous young man, dressed in an ultraprofessional, long black frockcoat, with a high,

white collar cutting off his dapper sidewhiskers in the centre, rubbed his hands together and smiled. In the

thick, burly man in front of him he scented a patient, and it would be his first. His scanty resources had begun

to run somewhat low, and, although he had his first quarter's rent safely locked away in the righthand

drawer of his desk, it was becoming a question with him how he should meet the current expenses of his very

simple housekeeping. He bowed, therefore, waved his visitor in, closed the hall door in a careless fashion, as

though his own presence thereat had been a purely accidental circumstance, and finally led the burly stranger

into his scantily furnished front room, where he motioned him to a seat. Dr. Wilkinson planted himself

behind his desk, and, placing his fingertips together, he gazed with some apprehension at his companion.

What was the matter with the man? He seemed very red in the face. Some of his old professors would have

diagnosed his case by now, and would have electrified the patient by describing his own symptoms before he

had said a word about them. Dr. Horace Wilkinson racked his brains for some clue, but Nature had fashioned

him as a ploddera very reliable plodder and nothing more. He could think of nothing save that the visitor's

watchchain had a very brassy appearance, with a corollary to the effect that he would be lucky if he got

halfacrown out of him. Still, even halfacrown was something in those early days of struggle.

Whilst the doctor had been running his eyes over the stranger, the latter had been plunging his hands into

pocket after pocket of his heavy coat. The heat of the weather, his dress, and this exercise of

pocketrummaging had all combined to still further redden his face, which had changed from brick to beet,

with a gloss of moisture on his brow. This extreme ruddiness brought a clue at last to the observant doctor.

Surely it was not to be attained without alcohol. In alcohol lay the secret of this man's trouble. Some little

delicacy was needed, however, in showing him that he had read his case arightthat at a glance he had

"Yes, it is weather which tempts one to drink rather more beer than is good for one," answered Dr. Horace

This was depressing. Dr. Wilkinson blushed until he was nearly as red as the other. "May I ask what I can do

for you?" he asked, picking up his stethoscope and tapping it gently against his thumbnail.

"Yes, I was just going to tell you. I heard of your coming, but I couldn't get round before" He broke into

"I should have been here three weeks ago, but you know how these things get put off." He coughed again

"I do not think that you need say anything more," said the doctor, taking over the case with an easy air of

command. "Your cough is quite sufficient. It is entirely bronchial by the sound. No doubt the mischief is

circumscribed at present, but there is always the danger that it may spread, so you have done wisely to come

to me. A little judicious treatment will soon set you right. Your waistcoat, please, but not your shirt. Puff out

The redfaced man began to laugh. "It's all right, doctor," said he. "That cough comes from chewing tobacco,

and I know it's a very bad habit. Nineandninepence is what I have to say to you, for I'm the officer of the

Dr. Horace Wilkinson collapsed into his chair. "Then you're not a patient?" he gasped.

"Oh, that's all right." The doctor concealed his disappointment under an affectation of facetiousness. "You

don't look as if you troubled them much. I don't know what we should do if every one were as robust. I shall

"If you could make it convenient, sir, now that I am here, it would save trouble"

"Oh, certainly!" These eternal little sordid money troubles were more trying to the doctor than plain living or

scanty food. He took out his purse and slid the contents on to the table. There were two halfcrowns and

some pennies. In his drawer he had ten golden sovereigns. But those were his rent. If he once broke in upon

"Dear me! " said he, with a smile, as at some strange, unheardof incident. "I have run short of small change.

"Very well, sir." The inspector rose, and with a practised glance around, which valued every article in the

room, from the twoguinea carpet to the eightshilling muslin curtains, he took his departure.

When he had gone Dr. Wilkinson rearranged his room, as was his habit a dozen times in the day. He laid out

his large Quain's Dictionary of Medicine in the forefront of the table so as to impress the casual patient that

he had ever the best authorities at his elbow. Then he cleared all the little instruments out of his

pocketcasethe scissors, the forceps, the bistouries, the lancetsand he laid them all out beside the

stethoscope, to make as good a show as possible. His ledger, daybook, and visitingbook were spread in

front of him. There was no entry in any of them yet, but it would not look well to have the covers too glossy

and new, so he rubbed them together and daubed ink over them. Neither would it be well that any patient

should observe that his name was the first in the book, so he filled up the first page of each with notes of

imaginary visits paid to nameless patients during the last three weeks. Having done all this, he rested his head

Terrible enough at any time to the young professional man, but most of all to one who knows that the weeks,

and even the days during which he can hold out are numbered. Economise as he would, the money would still

slip away in the countless little claims which a man never understands until he lives under a rooftree of his

own. Dr. Wilkinson could not deny, as he sat at his desk and looked at the little heap of silver and coppers,

that his chances of being a successful practitioner in Sutton were rapidly vanishing away.

And yet it was a bustling, prosperous town, with so much money in it that it seemed strange that a man with a

trained brain and dexterous fingers should be starved out of it for want of employment. At his desk, Dr.

Horace Wilkinson could see the neverending double current of people which ebbed and flowed in front of

his window. It was a busy street, and the air was forever filled with the dull roar of life, the grinding of the

wheels, and the patter of countless feet. Men, women, and children, thousands and thousands of them passed

in the day, and yet each was hurrying on upon his own business, scarce glancing at the small brass plate, or

wasting a thought upon the man who waited in the front room. And yet how many of them would obviously,

glaringly have been the better for his professional assistance. Dyspeptic men, anemic women, blotched faces,

bilious complexionsthey flowed past him, they needing him, he needing them, and yet the remorseless bar

of professional etiquette kept them forever apart. What could he do? Could he stand at his own front door,

pluck the casual stranger by the sleeve, and whisper in his ear, "Sir, you will forgive me for remarking that

you are suffering from a severe attack of acne rosacea, which makes you a peculiarly unpleasant object.

Allow me to suggest that a small prescription containing arsenic, which will not cost you more than you often

spend upon a single meal, will be very much to your advantage." Such an address would be a degradation to

the high and lofty profession of Medicine, and there are no such sticklers for the ethics of that profession as

Dr. Horace Wilkinson was still looking moodily out of the window, when there came a sharp clang at the

bell. Often it had rung, and with every ring his hopes had sprung up, only to dwindle away again, and change

to leaden disappointment, as he faced some beggar or touting tradesman. But the doctor's spirit was young

and elastic, and again, in spite of all experience, it responded to that exhilarating summons. He sprang to his

feet, cast his eyes over the table, thrust out his medical books a little more prominently, and hurried to the

door. A groan escaped him as he entered the hall. He could see through the halfglazed upper panels that a

gypsy van, hung round with wicker tables and chairs, had halted before his door, and that a couple of the

vagrants, with a baby, were waiting outside. He had learned by experience that it was better not even to

He closed the door, but the bell clanged once more. "Get away! Get away!" he cried impatiently, and walked

back into his consultingroom. He had hardly seated himself when the bell went for the third time. In a

In an instant he was rubbing his hands again with his blandest professional smile. These were patients, then,

whom he had tried to hunt from his doorstepthe very first patients, whom he had waited for so impatiently.

They did not look very promising. The man, a tall, lankhaired gypsy, had gone back to the horse's head.

There remained a small, hardfaced woman with a great bruise all round her eye. She wore a yellow silk

handkerchief round her head, and a baby, tucked in a red shawl, was pressed to her bosom.

"Pray step in, madam," said Dr. Horace Wilkinson, with his very best sympathetic manner. In this case, at

least, there could be no mistake as to diagnosis. "If you will sit on this sofa, I shall very soon make you feel

He poured a little water from his carafe into a saucer, made a compress of lint, fastened it over the injured

"Thank ye kindly, sir," said the woman, when his work was finished; "that's nice and warm, and may God

bless your honour. But it wasn't about my eye at all that I came to see a doctor."

"Not your eye?" Dr. Horace Wilkinson was beginning to be a little doubtful as to the advantages of quick

diagnosis. It is an excellent thing to be able to surprise a patient, but hitherto it was always the patient who

The mother parted the red shawl, and exhibited a little dark, blackeyed gypsy baby, whose swarthy face was

all flushed and mottled with a darkred rash. The child breathed with a rattling sound, and it looked up at the

doctor with eyes which were heavy with want of sleep and crusted together at the lids.

"And now that you've seen it, sir, I'll go on, for Reubenthat's my manis in a hurry."

"Oh, now you've seen it, it's all right. I'll let you know if anything happens."

"But you must have some medicine. The child is very ill." He descended into the little room which he had

fitted as a surgery, and he made up a twoounce bottle of cooling medicine. In such cities as Sutton there are

few patients who can afford to pay a fee to both doctor and chemist, so that unless the physician is prepared

to play the part of both he will have little chance of making a living at either.

"There is your medicine, madam. You will find the directions upon the bottle. Keep the child warm and give

"Excuse me, madam," said the doctor nervously. "Don't you think it too small a matter to make a bill of?

"Well, say halfacrown." He mentioned the sum in a halfjesting way, as though it were too small to take

serious notice of, but the gypsy woman raised quite a scream at the mention of it.

"Well, my good woman, why not go to the poor doctor if you cannot afford a fee?"

"Here's sevenpence," she said at last, holding out a little pile of copper coins. "I'll give you that and a wicker

"But my fee is halfacrown." The doctor's views of the glory of his profession cried out against this

wretched haggling, and yet what was he to do? "Where am I to get 'arfacrown? It is well for gentlefolk like

you who sit in your grand houses, and can eat and drink what you like, an' charge 'arfacrown for just saying

as much as, `'Ow d'ye do?' We can't pick up' arfcrowns like that. What we gets we earns 'ard. This

sevenpence is just all I've got. You told me to feed the child light. She must feed light, for what she's to have

Whilst the woman had been speaking, Dr. Horace Wilkinson's eyes had wandered to the tiny heap of money

upon the table, which represented all that separated him from absolute starvation, and he chuckled to himself

at the grim joke that he should appear to this poor woman to be a being living in the lap of luxury. Then he

"Here you are," he said brusquely. "Never mind the fee, and take these coppers. They may be of some use to

you. Goodbye!" He bowed her out, and closed the door behind her. After all she was the thin edge of the

wedge. These wandering people have great powers of recommendation. All large practices have been built up

from such foundations. The hangerson to the kitchen recommend to the kitchen, they to the drawingroom,

He went into the back room and lit the spiritkettle to boil the water for his tea, laughing the while at the

recollection of his recent interview. If all patients were like this one it could easily be reckoned how many it

would take to ruin him completely. Putting aside the dirt upon his carpet and the loss of time, there were

twopence gone upon the bandage, fourpence or more upon the medicine, to say nothing of phial, cork, label,

and paper. Then he had given her fivepence, so that his first patient had absorbed altogether not less than one

sixth of his available capital. If five more were to come he would be a broken man. He sat down upon the

portmanteau and shook with laughter at the thought, while he measured out his one spoonful and a half of tea

at one shilling eightpence into the brown earthenware teapot. Suddenly, however, the laugh faded from his

face, and he cocked his ear towards the door, standing listening with a slanting head and a sidelong eye.

There had been a rasping of wheels against the curb, the sound of steps outside, and then a loud peal at the

bell. With his teaspoon in his hand he peeped round the corner and saw with amazement that a carriage and

pair were waiting outside, and that a powdered footman was standing at the door. The spoon tinkled down

upon the floor, and he stood gazing in bewilderment. Then, pulling himself together, he threw open the door.

"Young man," said the flunky, "tell your master, Dr. Wilkinson, that he is wanted just as quick as ever he can

come to Lady Millbank, at the Towers. He is to come this very instant. We'd take him with us, but we have to

go back to see if Dr. Mason is home yet. Just you stir your stumps and give him the message."

The footman nodded and was off in an instant, while the coachman lashed his horses and the carriage flew

Here was a new development. Dr. Horace Wilkinson stood at his door and tried to think it all out. Lady

Millbank, of the Towers! People of wealth and position, no doubt. And a serious case, or why this haste and

summoning of two doctors? But, then, why in the name of all that is wonderful should he be sent for?

He was obscure, unknown, without influence. There must be some mistake. Yes, that must be the true

explanation; or was it possible that some one was attempting a cruel hoax upon him? At any rate, it was too

positive a message to be disregarded. He must set off at once and settle the matter one way or the other.

But he had one source of information. At the corner of the street was a small shop where one of the oldest

inhabitants dispensed newspapers and gossip. He could get information there if anywhere. He put on his

wellbrushed top hat, secreted instruments and bandages in all his pockets, and without waiting for his tea

The stationer at the corner was a human directory to every one and everything in Sutton, so that he soon had

all the information which he wanted. Sir John Millbank was very well known in the town, it seemed. He was

a merchant prince, an exporter of pens, three times mayor, and reported to be fully worth two millions

The Towers was his palatial seat, just outside the city. His wife had been an invalid for some years, and was

growing worse. So far the whole thing seemed to be genuine enough. By some amazing chance these people

"I am your neighbour, Dr. Horace Wilkinson," said he. "Is there any other medical man of that name in the

That was final, then. A great good fortune had come in his way, and he must take prompt advantage of it. He

called a cab and drove furiously to the Towers, with his brain in a whirl, giddy with hope and delight at one

moment, and sickened with fears and doubts at the next lest the case should in some way be beyond his

powers, or lest he should find at some critical moment that he was without the instrument or appliance that

was needed. Every strange and outre case of which he had ever heard or read came back into his mind, and

long before he reached the Towers he had worked himself into a positive conviction that he would be

The Towers was a very large house, standing back amid trees, at the head of a winding drive. As he drove up

the doctor sprang out, paid away half his worldly assets as a fare, and followed a stately footman who, having

taken his name, led him through the oakpanelled, stainedglass hall, gorgeous with deers' heads and ancient

armour, and ushered him into a large sittingroom beyond. A very irritablelooking, acidfaced man was

seated in an armchair by the fireplace, while two young ladies in white were standing together in the bow

"Hullo! hullo! hullo! What's thisheh?" cried the irritable man. "Are you Dr. Wilkinson? Eh?"

"Really, now. You seem very youngmuch younger than I expected. Well, well, well, Mason's old, and yet

he don't seem to know much about it. I suppose we must try the other end now. You're the Wilkinson who

Here was a light! The only two letters which the doctor had ever written to The Lancetmodest little letters

thrust away in a back column among the wrangles about medical ethics and the inquiries as to how much it

took to keep a horse in the countryhad been upon pulmonary disease. They had not been wasted, then.

Some eye had picked them out and marked the name of the writer. Who could say that work was ever wasted,

"No?that's queer too. He knows you and thinks a lot of your opinion. You're a stranger in the town, are you

"That was what Mason said. He didn't give me the address. Said he would call on you and bring you, but

when the wife got worse of course I inquired for you and sent for you direct. I sent for Mason, too, but he was

out. However, we can't wait for him, so just run away upstairs and do what you can."

"Well, I am placed in a rather delicate position," said Dr. Horace Wilkinson, with some hesitation. "I am here,

as I understand, to meet my colleague, Dr. Mason, in consultation. It would, perhaps, hardly be correct for me

"Would you, by Jove! Do you think I'll let my wife get worse while the doctor is coolly kicking his heels in

the room below? No, sir, I am a plain man, and I tell you that you will either go up or go out."

The style of speech jarred upon the doctor's sense of the fitness of things, but still when a man's wife is ill

much may be overlooked. He contented himself by bowing somewhat stiffly. "I shall go up, if you insist upon

"I do insist upon it. And another thing, I won't have her thumped about all over the chest, or any hocuspocus

of the sort. She has bronchitis and asthma, and that's all. If you can cure it well and good. But it only weakens

Personal disrespect was a thing that the doctor could stand; but the profession was to him a holy thing, and a

"Thank you," said he, picking up his hat. "I have the honour to wish you a very good day. I do not care to

"It is not my habit to give opinions without examining my patient. I wonder that you should suggest such a

But Sir John Millbank was a commercial man, and believed in the commercial principle that the more

difficult a thing is to attain the more valuable it is. A doctor's opinion had been to him a mere matter of

guineas. But here was a young man who seemed to care nothing either for his wealth or title. His respect for

"Tut! tut!" said he; "Mason is not so thinskinned. There! there! Have your way! Do what you like and I won't

say another word. I'll just run upstairs and tell Lady Millbank that you are coming."

The door had hardly closed behind him when the two demure young ladies darted out of their corner, and

"Don't let him bully you, doctor," said the other. "Oh, it was so nice to hear you stand up to him. That's the

way he does with poor Dr. Mason. Dr. Mason has never examined mamma yet. He always takes papa's word

for everything. Hush, Maude; here he comes again." They subsided in an instant into their corner as silent and

Dr. Horace Wilkinson followed Sir John up the broad, thickcarpeted staircase, and into the darkened sick

room. In a quarter of an hour he had sounded and sifted the case to the uttermost, and descended with the

husband once more to the drawingroom. In front of the fireplace were standing two gentlemen, the one a very

typical, cleanshaven, general practitioner, the other a strikinglooking man of middle age, with pale blue

Dr. Mason stared in astonishment. "I have never seen the gentleman before!" he cried.

"Did you think that in a case of such importance I should call in a junior local practitioner! This is Dr. Adam

Wilkinson, lecturer on pulmonary diseases at Regent's College, London, physician upon the staff of the St.

Swithin's Hospital, and author of a dozen works upon the subject. He happened to be in Sutton upon a visit,

and I thought I would utilise his presence to have a firstrate opinion upon Lady Millbank."

"Thank you," said Sir John, dryly. "But I fear my wife is rather tired now, for she has just been very

thoroughly examined by this young gentleman. I think we will let it stop at that for the present; though, of

course, as you have had the trouble of coming here, I should be glad to have a note of your fees."

When Dr. Mason had departed, looking very disgusted, and his friend, the specialist, very amused, Sir John

"Now, I'll tell you what," said he, when he had finished. "I'm a man of my word, d'ye see? When I like a man

I freeze to him. I'm a good friend and a bad enemy. I believe in you, and I don't believe in Mason. From now

on you are my doctor, and that of my family. Come and see my wife every day. How does that suit your

"I am extremely grateful to you for your kind intentions toward me, but I am afraid there is no possible way

"I could not possibly take Dr. Mason's place in the middle of a case like this. It would be a most

"Oh, well, go your own way!" cried Sir John, in despair. "Never was such a man for making difficulties.

You've had a fair offer and you've refused it, and now you can just go your own way."

The millionaire stumped out of the room in a huff, and Dr. Horace Wilkinson made his way homeward to his

spiritlamp and his oneandeightpenny tea, with his first guinea in his pocket, and with a feeling that he had

And yet this false start of his was a true start also, for it soon came to Dr. Mason's ears that his junior had had

it in his power to carry off his best patient and had forborne to do so. To the honour of the profession be it

said that such forbearance is the rule rather than the exception, and yet in this case, with so very junior a

practitioner and so very wealthy a patient, the temptation was greater than is usual. There was a grateful note,

a visit, a friendship, and now the wellknown firm of Mason and Wilkinson is doing the largest family

Robert Johnson was an essentially commonplace man, with no feature to distinguish him from a million

others. He was pale of face, ordinary in looks, neutral in opinions, thirty years of age, and a married man. By

trade he was a gentleman's outfitter in the New North Road, and the competition of business squeezed out of

him the little character that was left. In his hope of conciliating customers he had become cringing and

pliable, until working ever in the same routine from day to day he seemed to have sunk into a soulless

machine rather than a man. No great question had ever stirred him. At the end of this snug century,

selfcontained in his own narrow circle, it seemed impossible that any of the mighty, primitive passions of

mankind could ever reach him. Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one

of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the

moment his mask of civilisation and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.

Johnson's wife was a quiet little woman, with brown hair and gentle ways. His affection for her was the one

positive trait in his character. Together they would lay out the shop window every Monday morning, the

spotless shirts in their green cardboard boxes below, the neckties above hung in rows over the brass rails, the

cheap studs glistening from the white cards at either side, while in the background were the rows of cloth

caps and the bank of boxes in which the more valuable hats were screened from the sunlight. She kept the

books and sent out the bills. No one but she knew the joys and sorrows which crept into his small life. She

had shared his exultations when the gentleman who was going to India had bought ten dozen shirts and an

incredible number of collars, and she had been as stricken as he when, after the goods had gone, the bill was

returned from the hotel address with the intimation that no such person had lodged there. For five years they

had worked, building up the business, thrown together all the more closely because their marriage had been a

childless one. Now, however, there were signs that a change was at hand, and that speedily. She was unable

to come downstairs, and her mother, Mrs. Peyton, came over from Camberwell to nurse her and to welcome

Little qualms of anxiety came over Johnson as his wife's time approached. However, after all, it was a natural

process. Other men's wives went through it unharmed, and why should not his? He was himself one of a

family of fourteen, and yet his mother was alive and hearty. It was quite the exception for anything to go

wrong. And yet in spite of his reasonings the remembrance of his wife's condition was always like a sombre

Dr. Miles of Bridport Place, the best man in the neighbourhood, was retained five months in advance, and, as

time stole on, many little packets of absurdly small white garments with frill work and ribbons began to

arrive among the big consignments of male necessities. And then one evening, as Johnson was ticketing the

scarfs in the shop, he heard a bustle upstairs, and Mrs. Peyton came running down to say that Lucy was bad

It was not Robert Johnson's nature to hurry. He was prim and staid and liked to do things in an orderly

fashion. It was a quarter of a mile from the corner of the New North Road where his shop stood to the

doctor's house in Bridport Place. There were no cabs in sight so he set off upon foot, leaving the lad to mind

the shop. At Bridport Place he was told that the doctor had just gone to Harman Street to attend a man in a fit.

Johnson started off for Harman Street, losing a little of his primness as he became more anxious. Two full

cabs but no empty ones passed him on the way. At Harman Street he learned that the doctor had gone on to a

case of measles, fortunately he had left the address69 Dunstan Road, at the other side of the Regent's

Canal. Robert's primness had vanished now as he thought of the women waiting at home, and he began to run

as hard as he could down the Kingsland Road. Some way along he sprang into a cab which stood by the curb

and drove to Dunstan Road. The doctor had just left, and Robert Johnson felt inclined to sit down upon the

Fortunately he had not sent the cab away, and he was soon back at Bridport Place. Dr. Miles had not returned

yet, but they were expecting him every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on his knees, in a high,

dim lit room, the air of which was charged with a faint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive, and

the books in the shelves were sombre, and a squat black clock ticked mournfully on the mantelpiece. It told

him that it was halfpast seven, and that he had been gone an hour and a quarter. Whatever would the women

think of him! Every time that a distant door slammed he sprang from his chair in a quiver of eagerness. His

ears strained to catch the deep notes of the doctor's voice. And then, suddenly, with a gush of joy he heard a

quick step outside, and the sharp click of the key in the lock. In an instant he was out in the hall, before the

"If you please, doctor, I've come for you," he cried; "the wife was taken bad at six o'clock."

He hardly knew what he expected the doctor to do. Something very energetic, certainlyto seize some

drugs, perhaps, and rush excitedly with him through the gaslit streets. Instead of that Dr. Miles threw his

umbrella into the rack, jerked off his hat with a somewhat peevish gesture, and pushed Johnson back into the

"Oh, yes, doctor, last November. Johnson the outfitter, you know, in the New North Road."

"Yes, yes. It's a bit overdue," said the doctor, glancing at a list of names in a notebook with a very shiny

"My dear sir, there can be no very pressing hurry in a first case. We shall have an allnight affair, I fancy.

You can't get an engine to go without coals, Mr. Johnson, and I have had nothing but a light lunch."

"Thank you, but I fancy my dinner is actually on the table. I can do no good in the earlier stages. Go home

A sort of horror filled Robert Johnson as he gazed at this man who could think about his dinner at such a

moment. He had not imagination enough to realise that the experience which seemed so appallingly

important to him, was the merest everyday matter of business to the medical man who could not have lived

for a year had he not, amid the rush of work, remembered what was due to his own health. To Johnson he

seemed little better than a monster. His thoughts were bitter as he sped back to his shop.

"You've taken your time," said his motherinlaw reproachfully, looking down the stairs as he entered.

"Over! She's got to be worse, poor dear, before she can be better. Where's Dr. Miles!"

"He's coming after he's had dinner." The old woman was about to make some reply, when, from the

halfopened door behind a high whinnying voice cried out for her. She ran back and closed the door, while

Johnson, sick at heart, turned into the shop. There he sent the lad home and busied himself frantically in

putting up shutters and turning out boxes. When all was closed and finished he seated himself in the parlour

behind the shop. But he could not sit still. He rose incessantly to walk a few paces and then fell back into a

chair once more. Suddenly the clatter of china fell upon his ear, and he saw the maid pass the door with a cup

There was immeasurable consolation to him in that homely cup of tea. It wasn't so very bad after all if his

wife could think of such things. So lighthearted was he that he asked for a cup also. He had just finished it

"Dear me, that's bad!" said the doctor. "Perhaps it will do if I look in on my morning round?"

"No, no," cried Johnson, clutching at his thick frieze overcoat. "We are so glad that you have come. And,

The doctor passed upstairs, his firm, heavy steps resounding through the house. Johnson could hear his boots

creaking as he walked about the floor above him, and the sound was a consolation to him. It was crisp and

decided, the tread of a man who had plenty of selfconfidence. Presently, still straining his ears to catch what

was going on, he heard the scraping of a chair as it was drawn along the floor, and a moment later he heard

the door fly open and someone come rushing downstairs. Johnson sprang up with his hair bristling, thinking

that some dreadful thing had occurred, but it was only his motherinlaw, incoherent with excitement and

searching for scissors and some tape. She vanished again and Jane passed up the stairs with a pile of newly

aired linen. Then, after an interval of silence, Johnson heard the heavy, creaking tread and the doctor came

"That's better," said he, pausing with his hand upon the door. "You look pale, Mr. Johnson."

"Oh no, sir, not at all," he answered deprecatingly, mopping his brow with his handkerchief.

"There is no immediate cause for alarm," said Dr. Miles. "The case is not all that we could wish it. Still we

"Well, there is always danger, of course. It is not altogether a favourable case, but still it might be much

worse. I have given her a draught. I saw as I passed that they have been doing a little building opposite to

you. It's an improving quarter. The rents go higher and higher. You have a lease of your own little place, eh?"

"Yes, sir, yes!" cried Johnson, whose ears were straining for every sound from above, and who felt none the

less that it was very soothing that the doctor should be able to chat so easily at such a time. "That's to say no,

"Ah, I should get a lease if I were you. There's Marshall, the watchmaker, down the street. I attended his wife

twice and saw him through the typhoid when they took up the drains in Prince Street. I assure you his

He slanted his ear to the ceiling with a questioning face, and then darted swiftly from the room.

It was March and the evenings were chill, so Jane had lit the fire, but the wind drove the smoke downwards

and the air was full of its acrid taint. Johnson felt chilled to the bone, though rather by his apprehensions than

by the weather. He crouched over the fire with his thin white hands held out to the blaze. At ten o'clock Jane

brought in the joint of cold meat and laid his place for supper, but he could not bring himself to touch it. He

drank a glass of the beer, however, and felt the better for it. The tension of his nerves seemed to have reacted

upon his hearing, and he was able to follow the most trivial things in the room above. Once, when the beer

was still heartening him, he nerved himself to creep on tiptoe up the stair and to listen to what was going on.

The bedroom door was half an inch open, and through the slit he could catch a glimpse of the cleanshaven

face of the doctor, looking wearier and more anxious than before. Then he rushed downstairs like a lunatic,

and running to the door he tried to distract his thoughts by watching what; was going on in the street. The

shops were all shut, and some rollicking boon companions came shouting along from the publichouse. He

stayed at the door until the stragglers had thinned down, and then came back to his seat by the fire. In his dim

brain he was asking himself questions which had never intruded themselves before. Where was the justice of

it? What had his sweet, innocent little wife done that she should be used so? Why was nature so cruel? He

was frightened at his own thoughts, and yet wondered that they had never occurred to him before.

As the early morning drew in, Johnson, sick at heart and shivering in every limb, sat with his great coat

huddled round him, staring at the grey ashes and waiting hopelessly for some relief. His face was white and

clammy, and his nerves had been numbed into a half conscious state by the long monotony of misery. But

suddenly all his feelings leapt into keen life again as he heard the bedroom door open and the doctor's steps

upon the stair. Robert Johnson was precise and unemotional in everyday life, but he almost shrieked now as

One glance at the stern, drawn face which met him showed that it was no pleasant news which had sent the

doctor downstairs. His appearance had altered as much as Johnson's during the last few hours. His hair was

on end, his face flushed, his forehead dotted with beads of perspiration. There was a peculiar fierceness in his

eye, and about the lines of his mouth, a fighting look as befitted a man who for hours on end had been

striving with the hungriest of foes for the most precious of prizes. But there was a sadness too, as though his

grim opponent had been overmastering him. He sat down and leaned his head upon his hand like a man who

"I thought it my duty to see you, Mr. Johnson, and to tell you that it is a very nasty case. Your wife's heart is

not strong, and she has some symptoms which I do not like. What I wanted to say is that if you would like to

have a second opinion I shall be very glad to meet anyone whom you might suggest."

Johnson was so dazed by his want of sleep and the evil news that he could hardly grasp the doctor's meaning.

"Smith or Hawley would come for two guineas," said he. "But I think Pritchard of the City Road is the best

"Yes. Go to my house first and ask for the green baize bag. The assistant will give it to you. Tell him I want

the A. C. E. mixture. Her heart is too weak for chloroform. Then go for Pritchard and bring him back with

It was heavenly for Johnson to have something to do and to feel that he was of some use to his wife. He ran

swiftly to Bridport Place, his footfalls clattering through the silent streets and the big dark policemen turning

their yellow funnels of light on him as he passed. Two tugs at the nightbell brought down a sleepy, halfclad

assistant, who handed him a stoppered glass bottle and a cloth bag which contained something which clinked

when you moved it. Johnson thrust the bottle into his pocket, seized the green bag, and pressing his hat firmly

down ran as hard as he could set foot to ground until he was in the City Road and saw the name of Pritchard

engraved in white upon a red ground. He bounded in triumph up the three steps which led to the door, and as

he did so there was a crash behind him. His precious bottle was in fragments upon the pavement.

For a moment he felt as if it were his wife's body that was lying there. But the run had freshened his wits and

he saw that the mischief might be repaired. He pulled vigorously at the nightbell.

"Well, what's the matter?" asked a gruff voice at his elbow. He started back and looked up at the windows,

but there was no sign of life. He was approaching the bell again with the intention of pulling it, when a

"I can't stand shivering here all night," cried the voice. "Say who you are and what you want or I shut the

Then for the first time Johnson saw that the end of a speakingtube hung out of the wall just above the bell.

"All right," shouted Johnson. "You are to bring a bottle of A. C. E. mixture with you."

Five minutes later an elderly, hardfaced man, with grizzled hair, flung open the door. As he emerged a voice

"Mind you take your cravat, John," and he impatiently growled something over his shoulder in reply.

The consultant was a man who had been hardened by a life of ceaseless labour, and who had been driven, as

so many others have been, by the needs of his own increasing family to set the commercial before the

philanthropic side of his profession. Yet beneath his rough crust he was a man with a kindly heart.

"We don't want to break a record," said he, pulling up and panting after attempting to keep up with Johnson

for five minutes. "I would go quicker if I could, my dear sir, and I quite sympathise with your anxiety, but

So Johnson, on fire with impatience, had to slow down until they reached the New North Road, when he ran

ahead and had the door open for the doctor when he came. He heard the two meet outside the bedroom, and

caught scraps of their conversation. "Sorry to knock you upnasty casedecent people." Then it sank into a

Johnson sat up in his chair now, listening keenly, for he knew that a crisis must be at hand. He heard the two

doctors moving about, and was able to distinguish the step of Pritchard, which had a drag in it, from the

clean, crisp sound of the other's footfall. There was silence for a few minutes and then a curious drunken,

mumbling singsong voice came quavering up, very unlike anything which be had heard hitherto. At the same

time a sweetish, insidious scent, imperceptible perhaps to any nerves less strained than his, crept down the

stairs and penetrated into the room. The voice dwindled into a mere drone and finally sank away into silence,

and Johnson gave a long sigh of relief, for he knew that the drug had done its work and that, come what

But soon the silence became even more trying to him than the cries had been. He had no clue now as to what

was going on, and his mind swarmed with horrible possibilities. He rose and went to the bottom of the stairs

again. He heard the clink of metal against metal, and the subdued murmur of the doctors' voices. Then he

heard Mrs. Peyton say something, in a tone as of fear or expostulation, and again the doctors murmured

together. For twenty minutes he stood there leaning against the wall, listening to the occasional rumbles of

talk without being able to catch a word of it. And then of a sudden there rose out of the silence the strangest

little piping cry, and Mrs. Peyton screamed out in her delight and the man ran into the parlour and flung

But often the great cat Fate lets us go only to clutch us again in a fiercer grip. As minute after minute passed

and still no sound came from above save those thin, glutinous cries, Johnson cooled from his frenzy of joy,

and lay breathless with his ears straining. They were moving slowly about. They were talking in subdued

tones. Still minute after minute passing, and no word from the voice for which he listened. His nerves were

dulled by his night of trouble, and he waited in limp wretchedness upon his sofa. There he still sat when the

doctors came down to hima bedraggled, miserable figure with his face grimy and his hair unkempt from

his long vigil. He rose as they entered, bracing himself against the mantelpiece.

And at the words that little conventional spirit which had never known until that night the capacity for fierce

agony which lay within it, learned for the second time that there were springs of joy also which it had never

tapped before. His impulse was to fall upon his knees, but he was shy before the doctors.

"I'm sure, doctor, I'm veryI'm very" he grew inarticulate. "Here are your three guineas, Dr. Pritchard.

Johnson opened the shop door for them and heard their talk as they stood for an instant outside.

The firm step and the dragging one passed away to the right and the left. Johnson turned from the door still

with that turmoil of joy in his heart. He seemed to be making a new start in life. He felt that he was a stronger

and a deeper man. Perhaps all this suffering had an object then. It might prove to be a blessing both to his

wife and to him. The very thought was one which he would have been incapable of conceiving twelve hours

before. He was full of new emotions. If there had been a harrowing there had been a planting too.

"Can I come up?" he cried, and then, without waiting for an answer, he took the steps three at a time.

Mrs. Peyton was standing by a soapy bath with a bundle in her hands. From under the curve of a brown shawl

there looked out at him the strangest little red face with crumpled features, moist, loose lips, and eyelids

which quivered like a rabbit's nostrils. The weak neck had let the head topple over, and it rested upon the

But he felt a resentment to the little, red, blinking creature. He could not forgive it yet for that long night of

misery. He caught sight of a white face in the bed and he ran towards it with such love and pity as his speech

So he sat in silence with his hand in hers. The lamp was burning dim and the first cold light of dawn was

breaking through the window. The night had been long and dark but the day was the sweeter and the purer in

consequence. London was waking up. The roar began to rise from the street. Lives had come and lives had

It is hard for the general practitioner who sits among his patients both morning and evening, and sees them in

their homes between, to steal time for one little daily breath of cleanly air. To win it he must slip early from

his bed and walk out between shuttered shops when it is chill but very clear, and all things are sharply

outlined, as in a frost. It is an hour that has a charm of its own, when, but for a postman or a milkman, one

has the pavement to oneself, and even the most common thing takes an everrecurring freshness, as though

causeway, and lamp, and signboard had all wakened to the new day. Then even an inland city may seem

But it was by the sea that I lived, in a town that was unlovely enough were it not for its glorious neighbour.

And who cares for the town when one can sit on the bench at the headland, and look out over the huge, blue

bay, and the yellow scimitar that curves before it. I loved it when its great face was freckled with the fishing

boats, and I loved it when the big ships went past, far out, a little hillock of white and no hull, with topsails

curved like a bodice, so stately and demure. But most of all I loved it when no trace of man marred the

majesty of Nature, and when the sunbursts slanted down on it from between the drifting rainclouds. Then I

have seen the further edge draped in the gauze of the driving rain, with its thin grey shading under the slow

clouds, while my headland was golden, and the sun gleamed upon the breakers and struck deep through the

green waves beyond, showing up the purple patches where the beds of seaweed are lying. Such a morning as

that, with the wind in his hair, and the spray on his lips, and the cry of the eddying gulls in his ear, may send

a man back braced afresh to the reek of a sickroom, and the dead, drab weariness of practice.

It was on such another day that I first saw my old man. He came to my bench just as I was leaving it. My eye

must have picked him out even in a crowded street, for he was a man of large frame and fine presence, with

something of distinction in the set of his lip and the poise of his head. He limped up the winding path leaning

heavily upon his stick, as though those great shoulders had become too much at last for the failing limbs that

bore them. As he approached, my eyes caught Nature's danger signal, that faint bluish tinge in nose and lip

"The brae is a little trying, sir," said I. "Speaking as a physician, I should say that you would do well to rest

He inclined his head in a stately, oldworld fashion, and seated himself upon the bench. Seeing that he had

no wish to speak I was silent also, but I could not help watching him out of the corners of my eyes, for he was

such a wonderful survival of the early half of the century, with his lowcrowned, curlybrimmed hat, his

black satin tie which fastened with a buckle at the back, and, above all, his large, fleshy, cleanshaven face

shot with its mesh of wrinkles. Those eyes, ere they had grown dim, had looked out from the boxseat of

mail coaches, and had seen the knots of navvies as they toiled on the brown embankments. Those lips had

smiled over the first numbers of "Pickwick," and had gossiped of the promising young man who wrote them.

The face itself was a seventyyear almanack, and every seam an entry upon it where public as well as private

sorrow left its trace. That pucker on the forehead stood for the Mutiny, perhaps; that line of care for the

Crimean winter, it may be; and that last little sheaf of wrinkles, as my fancy hoped, for the death of Gordon.

And so, as I dreamed in my foolish way, the old gentleman with the shining stock was gone, and it was

seventy years of a great nation's life that took shape before me on the headland in the morning.

But he soon brought me back to earth again. As he recovered his breath he took a letter out of his pocket, and,

putting on a pair of hornrimmed eyeglasses, he read it through very carefully. Without any design of playing

the spy I could not help observing that it was in a woman's hand. When he had finished it he read it again,

and then sat with the corners of his mouth drawn down and his eyes staring vacantly out over the bay, the

most forlornlooking old gentleman that ever I have seen. All that is kindly within me was set stirring by that

wistful face, but I knew that he was in no humour for talk, and so, at last, with my breakfast and my patients

I never gave him another thought until the next morning, when, at the same hour, he turned up upon the

headland, and shared the bench which I had been accustomed to look upon as my own. He bowed again

before sitting down, but was no more inclined than formerly to enter into conversation. There had been a

change in him during the last twentyfour hours, and all for the worse. The face seemed more heavy and

more wrinkled, while that ominous venous tinge was more pronounced as he panted up the hill. The clean

lines of his cheek and chin were marred by a day's growth of grey stubble, and his large, shapely head had

lost something of the brave carriage which had struck me when first I glanced at him. He had a letter there,

the same, or another, but still in a woman's hand, and over this he was moping and mumbling in his senile

fashion, with his brow puckered, and the corners of his mouth drawn down like those of a fretting child. So I

left him, with a vague wonder as to who he might be, and why a single spring day should have wrought such

So interested was I that next morning I was on the look out for him. Sure enough, at the same hour, I saw him

coming up the hill; but very slowly, with a bent back and a heavy head. It was shocking to me to see the

But it was as though he had no heart for talk. He tried, as I thought, to make some fitting reply, but it slurred

off into a mumble and silence. How bent and weak and old he seemedten years older at the least than when

first I had seen him! It went to my heart to see this fine old fellow wasting away before my eyes. There was

the eternal letter which he unfolded with his shaking fingers. Who was this woman whose words moved him

so? Some daughter, perhaps, or granddaughter, who should have been the light of his home instead of I

smiled to find how bitter I was growing, and how swiftly I was weaving a romance round an unshaven old

man and his correspondence. Yet all day he lingered in my mind, and I had fitful glimpses of those two

I had hardly hoped to see him again. Another day's decline must, I thought, hold him to his room, if not to his

bed. Great, then, was my surprise when, as I approached my bench, I saw that he was already there. But as I

came up to him I could scarce be sure that it was indeed the same man. There were the curlybrimmed hat,

and the shining stock, and the horn glasses, but where were the stoop and the greystubbled, pitiable face?

He was cleanshaven and firm lipped, with a bright eye and a head that poised itself upon his great shoulders

like an eagle on a rock. His back was as straight and square as a grenadier's, and he switched at the pebbles

with his stick in his exuberant vitality. In the buttonhole of his wellbrushed black coat there glinted a golden

blossom, and the corner of a dainty red silk handkerchief lapped over from his breast pocket. He might have

"On occasion, sir; on occasion!" He cocked his eye at me as if to gauge whether I were worthy of his

I suppose that my face showed that I did not quite see the force of the explanation. My eyes, too, may have

given him assurance of sympathy, for he moved quite close to me and began speaking in a low, confidential

voice, as if the matter were of such weight that even the seagulls must be kept out of our councils.

"Ah, then you cannot quite understand it. My wife and I have been married for nearly fifty years, and we

"Yes, sir. This is the fourth day. She had to go to Scotland. A matter of duty, you understand, and the doctors

would not let me go. Not that I would have allowed them to stop me, but she was on their side. Now, thank

"Yes, here. This headland and bench were old friends of ours thirty years ago. The people with whom we stay

are not, to tell the truth, very congenial, and we have, little privacy among them. That is why we prefer to

meet here. I could not be sure which train would bring her, but if she had come by the very earliest she would

"No, sir, no," he entreated, "I beg that you will stay. It does not weary you, this domestic talk of mine?"

"I have been so driven inwards during these few last days! Ah, what a nightmare it has been! Perhaps it may

"No credit to me, sir! There's not a man on this planet but would feel the same if he had the good fortune to

be married to such a woman. Perhaps, because you see me like this, and hear me speak of our long life

"She's one of those women, you know, who have youth in their hearts, and so it can never be very far from

their faces. To me she's just as she was when she first took my hand in hers in '45. A wee little bit stouter,

perhaps, but then, if she had a fault as a girl, it was that she was a shade too slender. She was above me in

station, you knowI a clerk, and she the daughter of my employer. Oh! it was quite a romance, I give you

my word, and I won her; and, somehow, I have never got over the freshness and the wonder of it. To think

that that sweet, lovely girl has walked by my side all through life, and that I have been able"

He stopped suddenly, and I glanced round at him in surprise. He was shaking all over, in every fibre of his

great body. His hands were clawing at the woodwork, and his feet shuffling on the gravel. I saw what it was.

He was trying to rise, but was so excited that he could not. I half extended my hand, but a higher courtesy

constrained me to draw it back again and turn my face to the sea. An instant afterwards he was up and

A woman was coming towards us. She was quite close before he had seen herthirty yards at the utmost. I

know not if she had ever been as he described her, or whether it was but some ideal which he carried in his

brain. The person upon whom I looked was tall, it is true, but she was thick and shapeless, with a ruddy,

fullblown face, and a skirt grotesquely gathered up. There was a green ribbon in her hat, which jarred upon

my eyes, and her blouselike bodice was full and clumsy. And this was the lovely girl, the ever youthful! My

heart sank as I thought how little such a woman might appreciate him, how unworthy she might be of his

She came up the path in her solid way, while he staggered along to meet her. Then, as they came together,

looking discreetly out of the furthest corner of my eye, I saw that he put out both his hands, while she,

shrinking from a public caress, took one of them in hers and shook it. As she did so I saw her face, and I was

easy in my mind for my old man. God grant that when this hand is shaking, and when this back is bowed, a

Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to breakfast at the usual hour. The presentation chimingclock

which stood between the terracotta busts of Claude Bernard and of John Hunter upon the diningroom

mantelpiece had rung out the halfhour and the threequarters. Now its golden hand was verging upon the

It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the twelve years that she had kept house for him, his youngest

sister had never known him a second behind his time. She sat now in front of the high silver coffeepot,

uncertain whether to order the gong to be resounded or to wait on in silence. Either course might be a

Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle height, thin, with peering, puckered eyes, and the rounded

shoulders which mark the bookish woman. Her face was long and spare, flecked with colour above the

cheekbones, with a reasonable, thoughtful forehead, and a dash of absolute obstinacy in her thin lips and

prominent chin. Snow white cuffs and collar, with a plain dark dress, cut with almost Quakerlike simplicity,

bespoke the primness of her taste. An ebony cross hung over her flattened chest. She sat very upright in her

chair, listening with raised eyebrows, and swinging her eyeglasses backwards and forwards with a nervous

Suddenly she gave a sharp, satisfied jerk of the head, and began to pour out the coffee. From outside there

came the dull thudding sound of heavy feet upon thick carpet. The door swung open, and the Professor

entered with a quick, nervous step. He nodded to his sister, and seating himself at the other side of the table,

Professor Ainslie Grey was at that time fortythree years of agenearly twelve years older than his sister. His

career had been a brilliant one. At Edinburgh, at Cambridge, and at Vienna he had laid the foundations of his

His pamphlet, On the Mesoblastic Origin of Excitomotor Nerve Roots, had won him his fellowship of the

Royal Society; and his researches, Upon the Nature of Bathybius, with some Remarks upon Lithococci, had

been translated into at least three European languages. He had been referred to by one of the greatest living

authorities as being the very type and embodiment of all that was best in modern science. No wonder, then,

that when the commercial city of Birchespool decided to create a medical school, they were only too glad to

confer the chair of physiology upon Mr. Ainslie Grey. They valued him the more from the conviction that

their class was only one step in his upward journey, and that the first vacancy would remove him to some

In person he was not unlike his sister. The same eyes, the same contour, the same intellectual forehead. His

lips, however, were firmer, and his long, thin, lower jaw was sharper and more decided. He ran his finger and

"Those maids are very noisy," he remarked, as a clack of tongues sounded in the distance.

She had handed over his coffeecup, and was sipping at her own, glancing furtively through her narrowed

"The first great advance of the human race," said the Professor, "was when, by the development of their left

frontal convolutions, they attained the power of speech. Their second advance was when they learned to

He half closed his eyes as he spoke, and thrust his chin forward, but as he ceased he had a trick of suddenly

The Professor bowed over his egg with the manner of one who utters a courtly compliment; but the lady

"Yes, Ada; I slept badly. Some little cerebral congestion, no doubt due to overstimulation of the centers of

His sister stared across at him in astonishment. The Professor's mental processes had hitherto been as regular

as his habits. Twelve years' continual intercourse had taught her that he lived in a serene and rarefied

atmosphere of scientific calm, high above the petty emotions which affect humbler minds.

"You are surprised, Ada," he remarked. "Well, I cannot wonder at it. I should have been surprised myself if I

had been told that I was so sensitive to vascular influences. For, after all, all disturbances are vascular if you

"My dear, you have the feminine quality of receptivity very remarkably developed. Mrs. O'James is the lady

"But you know so little of her. The Esdailes themselves know so little. She is really only an acquaintance,

although she is staying at The Lindens. Would it not be wise to speak to Mrs. Esdaile first, John?"

"I do not think, Ada, that Mrs. Esdaile is at all likely to say anything which would materially affect my course

of action. I have given the matter due consideration. The scientific mind is slow at arriving at conclusions, but

having once formed them, it is not prone to change. Matrimony is the natural condition of the human race. I

have, as you know, been so engaged in academical and other work, that I have had no time to devote to

merely personal questions. It is different now, and I see no valid reason why I should forego this opportunity

"Hardly that, Ada. I ventured yesterday to indicate to the lady that I was prepared to submit to the common

lot of humanity. I shall wait upon her after my morning lecture, and learn how far my proposals meet with her

His sister started, and made an effort to conceal her expression of annoyance. She even stammered out some

few words of congratulation, but a vacant look had come into her brother's eyes, and he was evidently not

"I am sure, John, that I wish you the happiness which you deserve. If I hesitated at all, it is because I know

how much is at stake, and because the thing is so sudden, so unexpected." Her thin white hand stole up to the

black cross upon her bosom. "These are moments when we need guidance, John. If I could persuade you to

"It is useless to reopen that question," he said. "We cannot argue upon it. You assume more than I can grant. I

"I have faith in those great evolutionary forces which are leading the human race to some unknown but

She shook her head sadly. It was the one subject upon which she ventured to dispute her brother's infallibility.

"This is rather beside the question," remarked the Professor, folding up his napkin. "If I am not mistaken,

there is some possibility of another matrimonial event occurring in the family. Eh, Ada? What!"

His small eyes glittered with sly facetiousness as he shot a twinkle at his sister. She sat very stiff, and traced

"Dr. James M`Murdo O'Brien," continued her brother inexorably, "is a man who has already made his mark

upon the science of the day. He is my first and my most distinguished pupil. I assure you, Ada, that his

`Remarks upon the BilePigments, with special reference to Urobilin,' is likely to live as a classic. It is not

He paused, but his sister sat silent, with bent head and flushed cheeks. The little ebony cross rose and fell

"Dr. James M`Murdo O'Brien has, as you know, the offer of the physiological chair at Melbourne. He has

been in Australia five years, and has a brilliant future before him. Today he leaves us for Edinburgh, and in

two months' time, he goes out to take over his new duties. You know his feeling towards you. It, rests with

you as to whether he goes out alone. Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine any higher mission for a woman

of culture than to go through life in the company of a man who is capable of such a research as that which Dr.

"Ah, there are signs which are more subtle than speech," said her brother, wagging his head. "But you are

pale. Your vasomotor system is excited. Your arterioles have contracted. Let me entreat you to compose

yourself. I think I hear the carriage. I fancy that you may have a visitor this morning, Ada. You will excuse

With a quick glance at the clock he strode off into the hall, and within a few minutes he was rattling in his

His lecture over, Professor Ainslie Grey paid a visit to his laboratory, where he adjusted several scientific

instruments, made a note as to the progress of three separate infusions of bacteria, cut halfadozen sections

with a microtome, and finally resolved the difficulties of seven different gentlemen, who were pursuing

researches in as many separate lines of inquiry. Having thus conscientiously and methodically completed the

routine of his duties, he returned to his carriage and ordered the coachman to drive him to The Lindens. His

face as he drove was cold and impassive, but he drew his fingers from time to time down his prominent chin

The Lindens was an oldfashioned, ivyclad house which had once been in the country, but was now caught

in the long, redbrick feelers of the growing city. It still stood back from the road in the privacy of its own

grounds. A winding path, lined with laurel bushes, led to the arched and porticoed entrance. To the right was

a lawn, and at the far side, under the shadow of a hawthorn, a lady sat in a gardenchair with a book in her

hands. At the click of the gate she started, and the Professor, catching sight of her, turned away from the door,

"What! won't you go in and see Mrs. Esdaile?" she asked, sweeping out from under the shadow of the

She was a small woman, strongly feminine, from the rich coils of her lightcoloured hair to the dainty garden

slipper which peeped from under her creamtinted dress. One tiny wellgloved hand was outstretched in

greeting, while the other pressed a thick, greencovered volume against her side. Her decision and quick,

tactful manner bespoke the mature woman of the world; but her upraised face had preserved a girlish and

even infantile expression of innocence in its large, fearless, grey eyes, and sensitive, humorous mouth. Mrs.

O'James was a widow, and she was twoandthirty years of age; but neither fact could have been deduced

"You will surely go in and see Mrs. Esdaile," she repeated, glancing up at him with eyes which had in them

"I did not come to see Mrs. Esdaile," he answered, with no relaxation of his cold and grave manner; "I came

"I am sure I should be highly honoured," she said, with just the slightest little touch of brogue in her accent.

"I have already completed my academic duties. Take my arm, and we shall walk in the sunshine. Surely we

cannot wonder that Eastern people should have made a deity of the sun. It is the great beneficent force of

Natureman's ally against cold, sterility, and all that is abhorrent to him. What were you reading?"

"It is not I who differ from him. I am only a monada thing of no moment. The whole tendency of the

highest plane of modern thought differs from him. He defends the indefensible. He is an excellent observer,

but a feeble reasoner. I should not recommend you to found your conclusions upon Hale."

"I must read Nature's Chronicle to counteract his pernicious influence," said Mrs. O'James, with a soft,

Nature's Chronicle was one of the many books in which Professor Ainslie Grey had enforced the negative

"It is a faulty work," said he; "I cannot recommend it. I would rather refer you to the standard writings of

There was a pause in their talk as they paced up and down on the green, velvetlike lawn in the genial

"Have you thought at all," he asked at last, "of the matter upon which I spoke to you last night?"

She said nothing, but walked by his side with her eyes averted and her face aslant.

"I would not hurry you unduly," he continued. "I know that it is a matter which can scarcely be decided

offhand. In my own case, it cost me some thought before I ventured to make the suggestion. I am not an

emotional man, but I am conscious in your presence of the great evolutionary instinct which makes either sex

"How far these questions are psychic and how far material is still sub judice," said the Professor, with an air

of toleration. "Protoplasm may prove to be the physical basis of love as well as of life."

"How inflexible you are!" she exclaimed; "you would draw love down to the level of physics."

"Come, that is much better," she cried, with her sympathetic laugh. "That is really very pretty, and puts

Her eyes sparkled, and she tossed her chin with the pretty, wilful air of a woman who is mistress of the

"I have reason to believe," said the Professor, "that my position here will prove to be only a steppingstone to

some wider scene of scientific activity. Yet, even here, my chair brings me in some fifteen hundred pounds a

year, which is supplemented by a few hundreds from my books. I should therefore be in a position to provide

you with those comforts to which you are accustomed. So much for my pecuniary position. As to my

constitution, it has always been sound. I have never suffered from any illness in my life, save fleeting attacks

of cephalalgia, the result of too prolonged a stimulation of the centres of cerebration. My father and mother

had no sign of any morbid diathesis, but I will not conceal from you that my grandfather was afflicted with

"It is a grave taint, but I trust that I shall not be a victim to atavism. I have laid these facts before you because

they are factors which cannot be overlooked in forming your decision. May I ask now whether you see your

A struggle was evidently going on in her mind. Her eyes were cast down, her little slipper tapped the lawn,

and her fingers played nervously with her chatelain. Suddenly, with a sharp, quick gesture which had in it

They were standing under the shadow of the hawthorn. He stooped gravely down, and kissed her

"Come into the sunshine again," said he. "It is the great restorative. Your nerves are shaken. Some little

congestion of the medulla and pons. It is always instructive to reduce psychic or emotional conditions to their

physical equivalents. You feel that your anchor is still firm in a bottom of ascertained fact."

"Romance is the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where science throws her calm, clear light there

"Not at all. Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been brought within the domain of true

science. It may prove to be one of the great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws the

atom of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric acid, the force which it exerts may

be intrinsically similar to that which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear to be the primary

"And here is repulsion," said Mrs. O'James, as a stout, florid lady came sweeping across the lawn in their

"How do you do, Professor?" said the lady, with some little pomposity of manner. "You were very wise to

"Listen to the wind sighing in the trees!" cried Mrs. Esdaile, holding up one finger. "it is Nature's lullaby.

"Ah, Professor, I have always the same complaint against you. A want of rapport with the deeper meanings of

nature. Shall I say a want of imagination. You do not feel an emotional thrill at the singing of that thrush?"

"Science is so hopelessly prosaic. It dissects and labels, and loses sight of the great things in its attention to

the little ones. You have a poor opinion of woman's intellect, Professor Grey. I think that I have heard you

"It is a question of avoirdupois," said the Professor, closing his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. "The

female cerebrum averages two ounces less in weight than the male. No doubt there are exceptions. Nature is

"But the heaviest thing is not always the strongest," said Mrs. O'James, laughing. "Isn't there a law of

compensation in science? May we not hope to make up in quality for what we lack in quantity?"

"I think not," remarked the Professor, gravely. "But there is your luncheongong. No, thank you, Mrs.

Esdaile, I cannot stay. My carriage is waiting. Goodbye. Goodbye, Mrs. O'James."

"On the contrary," Mrs. O'James answered, with a saucy little jerk of the chin. "He has just asked me to be his

As Professor Ainslie Grey ascended the steps of his house, the halldoor opened and a dapper gentleman

stepped briskly out. He was somewhat sallow in the face, with dark, beady eyes, and a short, black beard with

an aggressive bristle. Thought and work had left their traces upon his face, but he moved with the brisk

"Then come back into the library," said the Professor; "you must stay and have lunch with us."

The two men entered the hall, and the Professor led the way into his private sanctum. He motioned his

"I trust that you have been successful, O'Brien," said he. "I should be loath to exercise any undue pressure

upon my sister Ada; but I have given her to understand that there is no one whom I should prefer for a

brotherinlaw to my most brilliant scholar, the author of Some Remarks upon the BilePigments, with

"You are very kind, Professor Greyyou have always been very kind," said the other. "I approached Miss

"No; she proposed to leave the matter open until my return from Edinburgh. I go today, as you know, and I

"On the comparative anatomy of the vermiform appendix, by James M`Murdo O'Brien," said the Professor,

sonorously. "It is a glorious subjecta subject which lies at the very root of evolutionary philosophy."

"Ah! she is the dearest girl," cried O'Brien, with a sudden little spurt of Celtic enthusiasm"she is the soul

"She is an angel from heaven," interrupted the other. "I fear that it is my advocacy of scientific freedom in

"You must not truckle upon that point. You must be true to your convictions; let there be no compromise

"My reason is true to agnosticism, and yet I am conscious of a voida vacuum. I had feelings at the old

church at home between the scent of the incense and the roll of the organ, such as I have never experienced in

"Sensuouspurely sensuous," said the Professor, rubbing his chin. "Vague hereditary tendencies stirred into

"Maybe so, maybe so," the younger man answered thoughtfully. "But this was not what I wished to speak to

you about. Before I enter your family, your sister and you have a claim to know all that I can tell you about

my career. Of my worldly prospects I have already spoken to you. There is only one point which I have

"I married shortly after my arrival in Australia. Miss Thurston was her name. I met her in society. It was a

Some painful emotion possessed him. His quick, expressive features quivered, and his white hands tightened

"You are the best judge," he remarked "but I should not think that it was necessary to go into details."

"You have a right to know everythingyou and Miss Grey. It is not a matter on which I can well speak to

her direct. Poor Jinny was the best of women, but she was open to flattery, and liable to be misled by

designing persons. She was untrue to me, Grey. It is a hard thing to say of the dead, but she was untrue to me.

She fled to Auckland with a man whom she had known before her marriage. The brig which carried them

"This is very painful, O'Brien," said the Professor, with a deprecatory motion of his hand. "I cannot see,

"I have eased my conscience," said O'Brien, rising from his chair; "I have told you all that there is to tell. I

"You are right, O'Brien. Your action has been most honourable and considerate. But you are not to blame in

the matter, save that perhaps you showed a little precipitancy in choosing a lifepartner without due care and

"No, Professor; I have my packing still to do. I have already bade Miss Grey adieu. In two months I shall see

"My dear Professor, let me congratulate you with all my heart. I had no idea. Who is the lady?"

"Mrs. O'James is her namea widow of the same nationality as yourself. But to return to matters of

importance, I should be very happy to see the proofs of your paper upon the vermiform appendix. I may be

"Your assistance will be invaluable to me," said O'Brien, with enthusiasm, and the two men parted in the hall.

The Professor walked back into the diningroom, where his sister was already seated at the luncheontable.

"I shall be married at the registrar's," he remarked; "I should strongly recommend you to do the same."

Professor Ainslie Grey was as good as his word. A fortnight's cessation of his classes gave him an

opportunity which was too good to let pass. Mrs. O'James was an orphan, without relations and almost

without friends in the country. There was no obstacle in the way of a speedy wedding. They were married,

accordingly, in the quietest manner possible, and went off to Cambridge together, where the Professor and his

charming wife were present at several academic observances, and varied the routine of their honeymoon by

incursions into biological laboratories and medical libraries. Scientific friends were loud in their

congratulations, not only upon Mrs. Grey's beauty, but upon the unusual quickness and intelligence which she

displayed in discussing physiological questions. The Professor was himself astonished at the accuracy of her

information. "You have a remarkable range of knowledge for a woman, Jeannette," he remarked upon more

than one occasion. He was even prepared to admit that her cerebrum might be of the normal weight.

One foggy, drizzling morning they returned to Birchespool, for the next day would reopen the session, and

Professor Ainslie Grey prided himself upon having never once in his life failed to appear in his lectureroom

at the very stroke of the hour. Miss Ada Grey welcomed them with a constrained cordiality, and handed over

the keys of office to the new mistress. Mrs. Grey pressed her warmly to remain, but she explained that she

had already accepted an invitation which would engage her for some months. The same evening she departed

A couple of days later the maid carried a card just after breakfast into the library where the Professor sat

revising his morning lecture. It announced the rearrival of Dr. James M`Murdo O'Brien. Their meeting was

effusively genial on the part of the younger man, and coldly precise on that of his former teacher.

"So I heard. Miss Grey told me in her letters, and I read the notice in the British Medical Journal. So it's

"I am constitutionally averse to anything in the nature of show or ceremony. My wife is a sensible womanI

may even go the length of saying that, for a woman, she is abnormally sensible. She quite agreed with me in

"This matrimonial incident has interrupted it, but I have resumed my classes, and we shall soon be quite in

"I must see Miss Grey before I leave England. We have corresponded, and I think that all will be well. She

"Your nature is not so weak as you pretend," he said. "Questions of this sort are, after all, quite subordinate to

"You would have me take out my Celtic soul and put in a Saxon one," he said. "Either my brain is too small

or my heart is too big. But when may I call and pay my respects to Mrs. Grey? Will she be at home this

"She is at home now. Come into the morningroom. She will be glad to make your acquaintance."

They walked across the linoleumpaved hall. The Professor opened the door of the room, and walked in,

followed by his friend. Mrs. Grey was sitting in a basketchair by the window, light and fairylike in a

looseflowing, pink morninggown. Seeing a visitor, she rose and swept towards them. The Professor heard

a dull thud behind him. O'Brien had fallen back into a chair, with his hand pressed tight to his side.

Mrs. Grey stopped dead in her advance, and stared at him with a face from which every expression had been

struck out, save one of astonishment and horror. Then with a sharp intaking of the breath she reeled, and

She sank back among the cushions with the same white, cold, dead look upon her face. The Professor stood

"So, O'Brien," he said at last, "you have already made the acquaintance of my wife!"

"Your wife, " cried his friend hoarsely. "She is no wife of yours. God help me, she is MY wife."

The Professor stood rigidly upon the hearthrug. His long, thin fingers were intertwined, and his head sunk a

"How could you leave me so, Jinny? How could you have the heart to do it? I thought you were dead. I

mourned for your deathay, and you have made me mourn for you living. You have withered my life."

She made no answer, but lay back among her cushions with her eyes still fixed upon him.

"Because you are right, James. I HAVE treated you cruellyshamefully. But it is not as bad as you think."

"No, I did not. At the last moment my better nature prevailed. He went alone. But I was ashamed to come

back after what I had written to you. I could not face you. I took passage alone to England under a new name,

and here I have lived ever since. It seemed to me that I was beginning life again. I knew that you thought I

was drowned. Who could have dreamed that fate would throw us together again! When the Professor asked

"You are faint," said the Professor"keep the head low; it aids the cerebral circulation." He flattened down

the cushion. "I am sorry to leave you, O'Brien; but I have my class duties to look to. Possibly I may find you

With a grim and rigid face he strode out of the room. Not one of the three hundred students who listened to

his lecture saw any change in his manner and appearance, or could have guessed that the austere gentleman in

front of them had found out at last how hard it is to rise above one's humanity. The lecture over, he performed

his routine duties in the laboratory, and then drove back to his own house. He did not enter by the front door,

but passed through the garden to the folding glass casement which led out of the morningroom. As he

approached he heard his wife's voice and O'Brien's in loud and animated talk. He paused among the

rosebushes, uncertain whether to interrupt them or no. Nothing was further from his nature than play the

eavesdropper; but as he stood, still hesitating, words fell upon his ear which struck him rigid and motionless.

"You are still my wife, Jinny," said O'Brien; "I forgive you from the bottom of my heart. I love you, and I

"No, James, my heart was always in Melbourne. I have always been yours. I thought that it was better for you

"You must choose between us now, Jinny. If you determine to remain here, I shall not open my lips. There

shall be no scandal. If, on the other hand, you come with me, it's little I care about the world's opinion.

Perhaps I am as much to blame as you. I thought too much of my work and too little of my wife."

"There is no need," said Professor Ainslie Grey, stepping in through the open casement. "I have overheard the

latter part of your conversation. I hesitated to interrupt you before you came to a conclusion."

O'Brien stretched out his hand and took that of the woman. They stood together with the sunshine on their

faces. The Professor paused at the casement with his hands behind his back, and his long black shadow fell

"You have come to a wise decision," said he. "Go back to Australia together, and let what has passed be

"What can I do or say?" she wailed. "How could I have foreseen this? I thought my old life was dead. But it

has come back again, with all its hopes and its desires. What can I say to you, Ainslie? I have brought shame

and disgrace upon a worthy man. I have blasted your life. How you must hate and loathe me! I wish to God

"I neither hate nor loathe you, Jeannette," said the Professor, quietly. "You are wrong in regretting your birth,

for you have a worthy mission before you in aiding the lifework of a man who has shown himself capable of

the highest order of scientific research. I cannot with justice blame you personally for what has occurred.

How far the individual monad is to be held responsible for hereditary and engrained tendencies, is a question

He stood with his fingertips touching, and his body inclined as one who is gravely expounding a difficult

and impersonal subject. O'Brien had stepped forward to say something, but the other's attitude and manner

froze the words upon his lips. Condolence or sympathy would be an impertinence to one who could so easily

"It is needless to prolong the situation," the Professor continued, in the same measured tones. "My brougham

stands at the door. I beg that you will use it as your own. Perhaps it would be as well that you should leave

the town without unnecessary delay. Your things, Jeannette, shall be forwarded."

"On the contrary. I think that of the three of us you come best out of the affair. You have nothing to be

"I shall see that the matter is put to her in its true light. Goodbye! Let me have a copy of your recent

Their hands met, and for one short moment their eyes also. It was only a glance, but for the first and last time

the woman's intuition cast a light for itself into the dark places of a strong man's soul. She gave a little gasp,

and her other hand rested for an instant, as white and as light as thistledown, upon his shoulder.

"I am not an emotional man," he said. "I have my dutiesmy research on Vallisneria. The brougham is

there. Your cloak is in the hall. Tell John where you wish to be driven. He will bring you anything you need.

His last two words were so sudden, so volcanic, in such contrast to his measured voice and masklike face,

that they swept the two away from him. He closed the door behind them and paced slowly up and down the

room. Then he passed into the library and looked out over the wire blind. The carriage was rolling away. He

caught a last glimpse of the woman who had been his wife. He saw the feminine droop of her head, and the

Under some foolish, aimless impulse, he took a few quick steps towards the door. Then he turned, and

There was little scandal about this singular domestic incident. The Professor had few personal friends, and

seldom went into society. His marriage had been so quiet that most of his colleagues had never ceased to

regard him as a bachelor. Mrs. Esdaile and a few others might talk, but their field for gossip was limited, for

The Professor was as punctual as ever at his classes, and as zealous in directing the laboratory work of those

who studied under him. His own private researches were pushed on with feverish energy. It was no

uncommon thing for his servants, when they came down of a morning, to hear the shrill scratchings of his

tireless pen, or to meet him on the staircase as he ascended, grey and silent, to his room. In vain his friends

assured him that such a life must undermine his health. He lengthened his hours until day and night were one

Gradually under this discipline a change came over his appearance. His features, always inclined to

gauntness, became even sharper and more pronounced. There were deep lines about his temples and across

his brow. His cheek was sunken and his complexion bloodless. His knees gave under him when he walked;

and once when passing out of his lectureroom he fell and had to be assisted to his carriage.

This was just before the end of the session and soon after the holidays commenced the professors who still

remained in Birchespool were shocked to hear that their brother of the chair of physiology had sunk so low

that no hopes could be entertained of his recovery. Two eminent physicians had consulted over his case

without being able to give a name to the affection from which he suffered. A steadily decreasing vitality

appeared to be the only symptom a bodily weakness which left the mind unclouded. He was much

interested himself in his own case, and made notes of his subjective sensations as an aid to diagnosis. Of his

approaching end he spoke in his usual unemotional and somewhat pedantic fashion. "It is the assertion," he

said, "of the liberty of the individual cell as opposed to the cellcommune. It is the dissolution of a

And so one grey morning his cooperative society dissolved. Very quietly and softly he sank into his eternal

sleep. His two physicians felt some slight embarrassment when called upon to fill in his certificate.

"If he were not such an unemotional man, I should have said that he had died from some sudden nervous

The relations between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox were very well known both among the

fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him

among their most illustrious confreres. There was naturally, therefore, a very widespread interest when it was

announced one morning that the lady had absolutely and for ever taken the veil, and that the world would see

her no more. When, at the very tail of this rumour, there came the assurance that the celebrated operating

surgeon, the man of steel nerves, had been found in the morning by his valet, seated on one side of his bed,

smiling pleasantly upon the universe, with both legs jammed into one side of his breeches and his great brain

about as valuable as a cap full of porridge, the matter was strong enough to give quite a little thrill of interest

to folk who had never hoped that their jaded nerves were capable of such a sensation.

Douglas Stone in his prime was one of the most remarkable men in England. Indeed, he could hardly be said

to have ever reached his prime, for he was but nineandthirty at the time of this little incident. Those who

knew him best were aware that, famous as he was as a surgeon, he might have succeeded with even greater

rapidity in any of a dozen lines of life. He could have cut his way to fame as a soldier, struggled to it as an

explorer, bullied for it in the courts, or built it out of stone and iron as an engineer. He was born to be great,

for he could plan what another man dare not do, and he could do what another man dare not plan. In surgery

none could follow him. His nerve, his judgment, his intuition, were things apart. Again and again his knife

cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient.

His energy, his audacity, his fullblooded selfconfidencedoes not the memory of them still linger to the

His vices were as magnificent as his virtues, and infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his income, and it

was the third largest of all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his living. Deep in his

complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye,

the ear, the touch, the palateall were his masters. The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the

curves and tints of the daintiest potteries of Europeit was to these that the quickrunning stream of gold was

transformed. And then there came his sudden mad passion for Lady Sannox, when a single interview with

two challenging glances and a whispered word set him ablaze. She was the loveliest woman in London, and

the only one to him. He was one of the handsomest men in London, but not the only one to her. She had a

liking for new experiences, and was gracious to most men who wooed her. It may have been cause or it may

He was a quiet, silent, neutraltinted man, this lord, with thin lips and heavy eyelids, much given to

gardening, and full of homelike habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in

London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and

the third of a county. Since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private

theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he

possessed. He was happier with a spud and a wateringcan among his orchids and chrysanthemums.

It was quite an interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of sense, or miserably wanting in spirit.

Did he know his lady's ways and condone them, or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be

discussed over the teacups in snug little drawingrooms, or with the aid of a cigar in the bow windows of

clubs. Bitter and plain were the comments among men upon his conduct. There was but one who had a good

word to say for him, and he was the most silent member in the smokingroom. He had seen him break in a

horse at the university, and it seemed to have left an impression upon his mind.

But when Douglas Stone became the favourite, all doubts as to Lord Sannox's knowledge or ignorance were

set for ever at rest. There, was no subterfuge about Stone. In his highhanded, impetuous fashion, he set all

caution and discretion at defiance. The scandal became notorious. A learned body intimated that his name

had been struck from the list of its vicepresidents. Two friends implored him to consider his professional

credit. He cursed them all three, and spent forty guineas on a bangle to take with him to the lady. He was at

her house every evening, and she drove in his carriage in the afternoons. There was not an attempt on either

side to conceal their relations; but there came at last a little incident to interrupt them.

It was a dismal winter's night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys and blustering

against the windowpanes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale,

drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and

sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at his elbow. As he raised it to his

lips, he held it up against the lamplight, and watched with the eye of a connoisseur the tiny scales of

beeswing which floated in its rich ruby depths. The fire, as it spurted up, threw fitful lights upon his bold,

clearcut face, with its widelyopened grey eyes, its thick and yet firm lips, and the deep, square jaw, which

had something Roman in its strength and its animalism. He smiled from time to time as he nestled back in his

luxurious chair. Indeed, he had a right to feel well pleased, for, against the advice of six colleagues, he had

performed an operation that day of which only two cases were on record, and the result had been brilliant

beyond all expectation. No other man in London would have had the daring to plan, or the skill to execute,

But he had promised Lady Sannox to see her that evening and it was already halfpast eight. His hand was

outstretched to the bell to order the carriage when he heard the dull thud of the knocker. An instant later there

The butler presented it upon the gold salver which had been given to his master by the wife of a Prime

"Yes, sir. He seems as if he came from abroad, sir. And he's in a terrible way."

"Tut, tut! I have an engagement. I must go somewhere else. But I'll see him. Show him in here, Pim."

A few moments later the butler swung open the door and ushered in a small and decrepit man, who walked

with a bent back and with the forward push of the face and blink of the eyes which goes with extreme short

sight. His face was swarthy, and his hair and beard of the deepest black. In one hand he held a turban of white

"Goodevening," said Douglas Stone, when the butler had closed the door. "You speak English, I presume?"

"I could come in the morning, but I have an engagement which prevents me from seeing your wife tonight."

The Turk's answer was a singular one. He pulled the string which closed the mouth of the chamois leather

"There are one hundred pounds there," said he, "and I promise you that it will not take you an hour. I have a

Douglas Stone glanced at his watch. An hour would not make it too late to visit Lady Sannox. He had been

there later. And the fee was an extraordinarily high one. He had been pressed by his creditors lately, and he

"Oh, it is so sad a one! So sad a one! You have not, perhaps, heard of the daggers of the Almohades?"

"Ah, they are Eastern daggers of a great age and of a singular shape, with the hilt like what you call a stirrup.

I am a curiosity dealer, you understand, and that is why I have come to England from Smyrna, but next week

I go back once more. Many things I brought with me, and I have a few things left, but among them, to my

"You will remember that I have an appointment, sir," said the surgeon, with some irritation. "Pray confine

"You will see that it is necessary. Today my wife fell down in a faint in the room in which I keep my wares,

"Yes, and there is no man, East or West, who can tell now what is the poison or what the cure. But all that is

known I know, for my father was in this trade before me, and we have had much to do with these poisoned

"And you say there is no cure. Why then should you pay me this considerable fee?"

"That is it. If it be on the finger, take the finger off. So said my father always. But think of where this wound

But familiarity with such grim matters may take the finer edge from a man's sympathy. To Douglas Stone this

was already an interesting case, and he brushed aside as irrelevant the feeble objections of the husband.

"It appears to be that or nothing," said he brusquely. It is better to lose a lip than a life."

"Ah, yes, I know that you are right. Well, well, it is kismet, and must be faced. I have the cab, and you will

Douglas Stone took his case of bistouries from a drawer, and placed it with a roll of bandage and a compress

of lint in his pocket. He must waste no more time if he were to see Lady Sannox.

"I am ready," said he, pulling on his overcoat. Will you take a glass of wine before you go out into this cold

"You forget that I am a Mussulman, and a true follower of the Prophet," said he. "But tell me what is the

"Ah, that also is forbidden to us. It is a spirit, and we make no use of such things."

"What! You would allow your wife to go through an operation without an anaesthetic?"

"Ah! she will feel nothing, poor soul. The deep sleep has already come on, which is the first working of the

poison. And then I have given her of our Smyrna opium. Come, sir, for already an hour has passed."

As they stepped out into the darkness, a sheet of rain was driven in upon their faces, and the hall lamp, which

dangled from the arm of a marble caryatid, went out with a fluff. Pim, the butler, pushed the heavy door to,

straining hard with his shoulder against the wind, while the two men groped their way towards the yellow

glare which showed where the cab was waiting. An instant later they were rattling upon their journey.

The surgeon pressed the spring of his repeater and listened to the little tings which told him the hour. It was a

quarter past nine. He calculated the distances, and the short time which it would take him to perform so trivial

an operation. He ought to reach Lady Sannox by ten o'clock. Through the fogged windows he saw the blurred

gaslamps dancing past, with occasionally the broader glare of a shop front. The rain was pelting and rattling

upon the leathern top of the carriage and the wheels swashed as they rolled through puddle and mud.

Opposite to him the white headgear of his companion gleamed faintly through the obscurity. The surgeon felt

in his pockets and arranged his needles, his ligatures and his safetypins, that no time might be wasted when

But the cab slowed down at last and pulled up. In an instant Douglas Stone was out, and the Smyrna

It was a meanlooking house in a narrow and sordid street. The surgeon, who knew his London well, cast a

swift glance into the shadows, but there was nothing distinctiveno shop, no movement, nothing but a

double line of dull, flatfaced houses, a double stretch of wet flagstones which gleamed in the lamplight, and

a double rush of water in the gutters which swirled and gurgled towards the sewer gratings. The door which

faced them was blotched and discoloured, and a faint light in the fan pane above it served to show the dust

and the grime which covered it. Above, in one of the bedroom windows, there was a dull yellow glimmer.

The merchant knocked loudly, and, as he turned his dark face towards the light, Douglas Stone could see that

it was contracted with anxiety. A bolt was drawn, and an elderly woman with a taper stood in the doorway,

The merchant closed the door, and Douglas Stone walked down the narrow passage, glancing about him in

some surprise as he did so. There was no oilcloth, no mat, no hatrack. Deep grey dust and heavy festoons of

cobwebs met his eyes everywhere. Following the old woman up the winding stair, his firm footfall echoed

The bedroom was on the second landing. Douglas Stone followed the old nurse into it, with the merchant at

his heels. Here, at least, there was furniture and to spare. The floor was littered and the corners piled with

Turkish cabinets, inlaid tables, coats of chain mail, strange pipes, and grotesque weapons. A single small

lamp stood upon a bracket on the wall. Douglas Stone took it down, and picking his way among the lumber,

walked over to a couch in the corner, on which lay a woman dressed in the Turkish fashion, with yashmak

and veil. The lower part of the face was exposed, and the surgeon saw a jagged cut which zigzagged along

"You will forgive the yashmak," said the Turk. "You know our views about woman in the East."

But the surgeon was not thinking about the yashmak. This was no longer a woman to him. It was a case. He

"There are no signs of irritation," said he. "We might delay the operation until local symptoms develop."

"Oh! sir, sir!" he cried. "Do not trifle. You do not know. It is deadly. I know, and I give you my assurance

"That is enough!" the Turk cried, angrily. "Every minute is of importance, and I cannot stand here and see my

wife allowed to sink. It only remains for me to give you my thanks for having come, and to call in some other

Douglas Stone hesitated. To refund that hundred pounds was no pleasant matter. But of course if he left the

case he must return the money. And if the Turk were right and the woman died, his position before a coroner

Douglas Stone turned fiercely upon the man. The speech was a brutal one. But the Turk has his own fashion

of talk and of thought, and there was no time for wrangling. Douglas Stone drew a bistoury from his case,

opened it and felt the keen straight edge with his forefinger. Then he held the lamp closer to the bed. Two

dark eyes were gazing up at him through the slit in the yashmak. They were all iris, and the pupil was hardly

He glanced again at the dark eyes which looked straight at his own. They were dull and lustreless, but, even

The same thought had crossed the surgeon's mind. He grasped the wounded lip with his forceps, and with two

swift cuts he took out a broad Vshaped piece. The woman sprang up on the couch with a dreadful gurgling

scream. Her covering was torn from her face. It was a face that he knew. In spite of that protruding upper lip

and that slobber of blood, it was a face that he knew. She kept on putting her hand up to the gap and

screaming. Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the couch with his knife and his forceps. The room was

whirling round, and he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear. A bystander would have said

that his face was the more ghastly of the two. As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the

play, he was conscious that the Turk's hair and beard lay upon the table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning

against the wall with his hand to his side, laughing silently. The screams had died away now, and the dreadful

head had dropped back again upon the pillow, but Douglas Stone still sat motionless, and Lord Sannox still

"It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation," said he, "not physically, but morally, you know,

Douglas Stone stooped forwards and began to play with the fringe of the coverlet. His knife tinkled down

"I had long intended to make a little example," said Lord Sannox, suavely. "Your note of Wednesday

miscarried, and I have it here in my pocketbook. I took some pains in carrying out my idea. The wound, by

He glanced keenly at his silent companion, and cocked the small revolver which he held in his coat pocket.

And at that Douglas Stone began to laugh. He laughed long and loudly. But Lord Sannox did not laugh now.

Something like fear sharpened and hardened his features. He walked from the room, and he walked on tiptoe.

Then he went down to the street. The cab was at the door, and the driver raised his hand to his hat.

"John," said Lord Sannox, "you will take the doctor home first. He will want leading downstairs, I think. Tell

"Oh, my address for the next few months will be Hotel di Roma, Venice. Just see that the letters are sent on.

And tell Stevens to exhibit all the purple chrysanthemums next Monday and to wire me the result."

The Foreign Minister was down with the gout. For a week he had been confined to the house, and he had

missed two Cabinet Councils at a time when the pressure upon his department was severe. It is true that he

had an excellent undersecretary and an admirable staff, but the Minister was a man of such ripe experience

and of such proven sagacity that things halted in his absence. When his firm hand was at the wheel the great

ship of State rode easily and smoothly upon her way; when it was removed she yawed and staggered until

twelve British editors rose up in their omniscience and traced out twelve several courses, each of which was

the sole and only path to safety. Then it was that the Opposition said vain things, and that the harassed Prime

The Foreign Minister sat in his dressingroom in the great house in Cavendish Square. It was May, and the

square garden shot up like a veil of green in front of his window, but, in spite of the sunshine, a fire crackled

and sputtered in the grate of the sickroom. In a deepred plush armchair sat the great statesman, his head

leaning back upon a silken pillow, one foot stretched forward and supported upon a padded rest. His

deeplylined, finelychiselled face and slowmoving, heavilypouched eyes were turned upwards towards the

carved and painted ceiling, with that inscrutable expression which had been the despair and the admiration of

his Continental colleagues upon the occasion of the famous Congress when he had made his first appearance

in the arena of European diplomacy. Yet at the present moment his capacity for hiding his emotions had for

the instant failed him, for about the lines of his strong, straight mouth and the puckers of his broad,

overhanging forehead, there were sufficient indications of the restlessness and impatience which consumed

And indeed there was enough to make a man chafe, for he had much to think of and yet was bereft of the

power of thought. There was, for example, that question of the Dobrutscha and the navigation of the mouths

of the Danube which was ripe for settlement. The Russian Chancellor had sent a masterly statement upon the

subject, and it was the pet ambition of our Minister to answer it in a worthy fashion. Then there was the

blockade of Crete, and the British fleet lying off Cape Matapan, waiting for instructions which might change

the course of European history. And there were those three unfortunate Macedonian tourists, whose friends

were momentarily expecting to receive their ears or their fingers in default of the exorbitant ransom which

had been demanded. They must be plucked out of those mountains, by force or by diplomacy, or an outraged

public would vent its wrath upon Downing Street. All these questions pressed for a solution, and yet here was

the Foreign Minister of England, planted in an armchair, with his whole thoughts and attention riveted upon

the ball of his right toe! It was humiliatinghorribly humiliating! His reason revolted at it. He had been a

respecter of himself, a respecter of his own will; but what sort of a machine was it which could be utterly

thrown out of gear by a little piece of inflamed gristle? He groaned and writhed among his cushions.

But, after all, was it quite impossible that he should go down to the House? Perhaps the doctor was

exaggerating the situation. There was a Cabinet Council that day. He glanced at his watch. It must be nearly

over by now. But at least he might perhaps venture to drive down as far as Westminster. He pushed back the

little round table with its bristle of medicinebottles, and levering himself up with a hand upon either arm of

the chair, he clutched a thick oak stick and hobbled slowly across the room. For a moment as he moved, his

energy of mind and body seemed to return to him. The British fleet should sail from Matapan. Pressure

should be brought to bear upon the Turks. The Greeks should be shownOw! In an instant the

Mediterranean was blotted out, and nothing remained but that huge, undeniable, intrusive, redhot toe. He

staggered to the window and rested his left hand upon the ledge, while he propped himself upon his stick with

his right. Outside lay the bright, cool, square garden, a few welldressed passersby, and a single,

neatlyappointed carriage, which was driving away from his own door. His quick eye caught the coatofarms

on the panel, and his lips set for a moment and his bushy eyebrows gathered ominously with a deep furrow

between them. He hobbled back to his seat and struck the gong which stood upon the table.

It was clear that it was impossible to think of going to the House. The shooting up his leg warned him that his

doctor had not overestimated the situation. But he had a little mental worry now which had for the moment

eclipsed his physical ailments. He tapped the ground impatiently with his stick until the door of the

dressingroom swung open, and a tall, elegant lady of rather more than middle age swept into the chamber.

Her hair was touched with grey, but her calm, sweet face had all the freshness of youth, and her gown of

green shot plush, with a sparkle of gold passementerie at her bosom and shoulders, showed off the lines of

"Oh, you've been up!" she cried, shaking an admonitory forefinger. "What an old dear it is! How can you be

so rash? What am I to say to Sir William when he comes? You know that he gives up his cases when they are

"In this instance the case may give him up," said the Minister, peevishly; "but I must beg, Clara, that you will

"Then why ask?" she said. "One might almost think, Charles, that you were laying a trap! Did you expect that

"For Heaven's sake, leave it alone! I asked because I was surprised that Lord Arthur should call here. I should

have fancied, Clara, that I had made myself sufficiently clear on that point. Who received him?"

"I will not have him brought into contact with Ida. I do not approve of it. The matter has gone too far

Lady Clara seated herself on a velvettopped footstool, and bent her stately figure over the Minister's hand,

"Now you have said it, Charles," said she. "It has gone too farI give you my word, dear, that I never

suspected it until it was past all mending. I may be to blameno doubt I am; but it was all so sudden. The

tail end of the season and a week at Lord Donnythorne's. That was all. But oh! Charlie, she loves him so, and

"Tut, tut!" cried the Minister impatiently, slapping on the plush arm of his chair. "This is too much. I tell you,

Clara, I give you my word, that all my official duties, all the affairs of this great empire, do not give me the

"Mesalliance, Charles! Lord Arthur Sibthorpe, son of the Duke of Tavistock, with a pedigree from the

"Lord Arthur is the fourth son of the poorest duke in England," said he. "He has neither prospects nor

"But consider Ida! You know how frail her health is. Her whole soul is set upon him. You would not have the

"Now, Charlie, you must not excite yourself over public matters. Be very good and cool and reasonable, like

She threw her light shawl round the invalid's shoulders, and slipped away into the bedroom as the great man

"My dear Charles," said he cordially, stepping into the room with all the boyish briskness for which he was

famous, "I trust that you find yourself a little better. Almost ready for harness, eh? We miss you sadly, both in

the House and in the Council. Quite a storm brewing over this Grecian business. The Times took a nasty line

"So I saw," said the invalid, smiling up at his chief. "Well, well, we must let them see that the country is not

entirely ruled from Printing House Square yet. We must keep our own course without faltering."

"Certainly, Charles, most undoubtedly," assented the Prime Minister, with his hands in his pockets.

"It was so kind of you to call. I am all impatience to know what was done in the Council."

"Pure formalities, nothing more. Bytheway, the Macedonian prisoners are all right."

"We adjourned all other business until we should have you with us next week. The question of a dissolution

"We must really straighten up our foreign business a little," said he. "I must get Novikoff's Note answered. It

is clever, but the fallacies are obvious. I wish, too, we could clear up the Afghan frontier. This illness is most

exasperating. There is so much to be done, but my brain is clouded. Sometimes I think it is the gout, and

"What will our medical autocrat say?" laughed the Prime Minister. "You are so irreverent, Charles. With a

bishop one may feel at one's ease. They are not beyond the reach of argument. But a doctor with his

stethoscope and thermometer is a thing apart. Your reading does not impinge upon him. He is serenely above

you. And then, of course, he takes you at a disadvantage. With health and strength one might cope with him.

The invalid knew his illustrious colleague too well to follow him down any of those bypaths of knowledge

in which he delighted to wander. To his intensely shrewd and practical mind there was something repellent in

the waste of energy involved in a discussion upon the Early Church or the twentyseven principles of Mesmer.

It was his custom to slip past such conversational openings with a quick step and an averted face.

"I have hardly glanced at his writings," said he. "Bytheway, I suppose that there was no special

"Ah! I had almost forgotten. Yes, it was one of the things which I had called to tell you. Sir Algernon Jones

"Ah, patronage, patronage!" sighed the Prime Minister. "Every vacancy makes one doubtful friend and a

dozen very positive enemies. Who so bitter as the disappointed placeseeker? But you are right, Charles.

Better fill it at once, especially as there is some little trouble in Morocco. I understand that the Duke of

Tavistock would like the place for his fourth son, Lord Arthur Sibthorpe. We are under some obligation to the

"My dear friend," he said, "it is the very appointment which I should have suggested. Lord Arthur would be

"Cavendish Square?" hazarded his chief, with a little arch query of his eyebrows.

"Well, let us say London. He has manner and tact. He was at Constantinople in Norton's time."

"No, I have not. But the appointment would be an excellent one in every way. Would you have the great

"I trust so. We miss you at every turn. The Times will try to make mischief over that Grecian business. A

leaderwriter is a terribly irresponsible thing, Charles. There is no method by which he may be confuted,

He shook the invalid's hand, gave a jaunty wave of his broadbrimmed hat, and darted out of the room with

The footman had already opened the great folding door to usher the illustrious visitor to his carriage, when a

lady stepped from the drawingroom and touched him on the sleeve. From behind the halfclosed portiere of

"My dear Lady Clara!" interrupted the Prime Minister, with a youthful bow and wave.

"Pray do not answer me if I go too far. But I know that Lord Arthur Sibthorpe has applied for Tangier. Would

"Lord Arthur must go in a week. I am delighted to perceive, Lady Clara, that the appointment has your

approval. Tangier is a place of extraordinary interest. Catherine of Braganza and Colonel Kirke will occur to

your memory. Burton has written well upon Northern Africa. I dine at Windsor, so I am sure that you will

excuse my leaving you. I trust that Lord Charles will be better. He can hardly fail to be so with such a nurse."

He bowed, waved, and was off down the steps to his brougham. As he drove away, Lady Clara could see that

She pushed back the velvet curtains, and returned into the drawingroom. Her daughter stood in the sunlight

by the window, tall, fragile, and exquisite, her features and outline not unlike her mother's, but frailer, softer,

more delicate. The golden light struck one half of her highbred, sensitive face, and glimmered upon her

thicklycoiled flaxen hair, striking a pinkish tint from her closelycut costume of fawncoloured cloth with

its dainty cinnamon ruchings. One little soft frill of chiffon nestled round her throat, from which the white,

graceful neck and wellpoised head shot up like a lily amid moss. Her thin white hands were pressed

"Silly girl! Silly girl!" said the matron, answering that imploring look. She put her hands upon her daughter's

sloping shoulders and drew her towards her. "It is a very nice place for a short time. It will be a stepping

"Yes indeed. A great deal may be done in a week. I shall order your trousseau today."

"Oh! you dear, sweet angel! But I am so frightened! And papa? Oh! dear, I am so frightened!"

"But, between ourselves, he married a diplomatist too. If he can manage the British Empire, I think that I can

"Then it is quite time it came to a head. Lord Arthur cannot leave England without you. You must go to

Tangier as the Minister's wife. Now, you will sit there on the settee, dear, and let me manage entirely. There

is Sir William's carriage! I do think that I know how to manage Sir William. James, just ask the doctor to step

A heavy, twohorsed carriage had drawn up at the door, and there came a single stately thud upon the

knocker. An instant afterwards the drawingroom door flew open and the footman ushered in the famous

physician. He was a small man, cleanshaven, with the oldfashioned black dress and white cravat with

highstanding collar. He swung his golden pincenez in his right hand as he walked, and bent forward with a

peering, blinking expression, which was somehow suggestive of the dark and complex cases through which

"Thank you, I will sit beside her," said he, taking his place upon the settee. "She is looking better, less

anaemic unquestionably, and a fuller pulse. Quite a little tinge of colour, and yet not hectic."

"Ah, that pain!" He tapped lightly under the collarbones, and then bent forward with his biaural stethoscope

in either ear. "Still a trace of dulnessstill a slight crepitation," he murmured.

"Did I? I rather forget the particulars of our conversation. But a dry climate is certainly indicated."

"Well, I think really that a patient should be allowed some latitude. I must not exact too rigid discipline.

There is room for individual choicethe Engadine, Central Europe, Egypt, Algiers, which you like."

"No, no, Sir William! We feel safest when we are most obedient. You have said Tangier, and we shall

"Really, Lady Clara, your implicit faith is most flattering. It is not everyone who would sacrifice their own

"We know your skill and your experience, Sir William. Ida shall try Tangier. I am convinced that she will be

"But you know Lord Charles. He is just a little inclined to decide medical matters as he would an affair of

"As long as Lord Charles honours me so far as to ask my advice I am sure that he would not place me in the

The medical baronet whirled round the cord of his pincenez and pushed out a protesting hand.

"Having deliberately formed the opinion that Tangier is the best place for our young patient, I do not think

"And meanwhile she will continue her present course of treatment. I trust that the warm African air may send

He bowed in the courteous, sweeping, oldworld fashion which had done so much to build up his ten

thousand a year, and, with the stealthy gait of a man whose life is spent in sickrooms, he followed the

As the red velvet curtains swept back into position, the Lady Ida threw her arms round her mother's neck and

But her mother's expression was rather that of the general who looked upon the first smoke of the guns than

"All will be right, dear," said she, glancing down at the fluffy yellow curls and tiny ear. "There is still much

"Of course, it will in any case be a very quiet affair. Arthur must get the license. I do not approve of

holeandcorner marriages, but where the gentleman has to take up an official position some allowance must

be made. We can have Lady Hilda Edgecombe, and the Trevors, and the Grevilles, and I am sure that the

"Oh, yes; he will come too, if he is well enough. We must wait until Sir William goes, and, meanwhile, I

Half an hour had passed, and quite a number of notes had been dashed off in the fine, bold, parkpaling

handwriting of the Lady Clara, when the door clashed, and the wheels of the doctor's carriage were heard

grating outside against the kerb. The Lady Clara laid down her pen, kissed her daughter, and started off for

the sickroom. The Foreign Minister was lying back in his chair, with a red silk handkerchief over his

"I think it is almost liniment time," said Lady Clara, shaking a blue crinkled bottle. "Shall I put on a little?"

"Oh! this pestilent toe!" groaned the sufferer. "Sir William won't hear of my moving yet. I do think he is the

most completely obstinate and pigheaded man that I have ever met. I tell him that he has mistaken his

profession, and that I could find him a post at Constantinople. We need a mule out there."

"Well, he has been laying down the law about Ida. He has decreed, it seems, that she is to go to Tangier."

Lady Clara's face had assumed an expression of transparent obvious innocence, an intrusive candour which is

"He examined her lungs, Charles. He did not say much, but his expression was very grave."

"No, no, Charles; it is no laughing matter. He said that she must have a change. I am sure that he thought

more than he said. He spoke of dulness and crepitation. and the effects of the African air. Then the talk turned

upon dry, bracing health resorts, and he agreed that Tangier was the place. He said that even a few months

Lord Charles shrugged his shoulders with the air of a man who is but half convinced.

"But of course," said Lady Clara, serenely, if you think it better that Ida should not go she shall not. The only

thing is that if she should get worse we might feel a little uncomfortable afterwards. In a weakness of that sort

a very short time may make a difference. Sir William evidently thought the matter critical. Still, there is no

reason why he should influence you. It is a little responsibility, however. If you take it all upon yourself and

"Oh! I don't wish to do that, Charles. But you remember what happened to Lord Bellamy's child. She was just

Ida's age. That was another case in which Sir William's advice was disregarded."

"No, no, of course not. I know your strong sense, and your good heart too well, dear. You were very wisely

looking at both sides of the question. That is what we poor women cannot do. It is emotion against reason, as

I have often heard you say. We are swayed this way and that, but you men are persistent, and so you gain

"Well, Clara, admitting that Ida is to go to Tangier, you will allow that it is impossible for me to escort her?

"Well, then, whom can we possibly ask? Especially just as the season is commencing. You see, Clara, the

His wife rested her elbows against the back of the great red chair, and passed her fingers through the

statesman's grizzled curls, stooping down as she did so until her lips were close to his ear.

Lord Charles bounded in his chair, and muttered a word or two such as were more frequently heard from

"Are you mad, Clara!" he cried. "What can have put such a thought into your head?"

"Yes, dear. Now do, do be good! Or perhaps I had better not speak to you about it any more."

"It was the Prime Minister, then, who told me that Lord Arthur was going to Tangier."

"And then came Sir William with his advice about Ida. Oh! Charlie, it is surely more than a coincidence!"

"I am convinced," said Lord Charles, with his shrewd, questioning gaze, "that it is very much more than a

coincidence, Lady Clara. You are a very clever woman, my dear. A born manager and organiser."

"Think of our own young days, Charlie," she whispered, with her fingers still toying with his hair. "What

were you then? A poor man, not even Ambassador at Tangier. But I loved you, and believed in you, and have

I ever regretted it? Ida loves and believes in Lord Arthur, and why should she ever regret it either?"

Lord Charles was silent. His eyes were fixed upon the green branches which waved outside the window; but

his mind had flashed back to a Devonshire countryhouse of thirty years ago, and to the one fateful evening

when, between old yew hedges, he paced along beside a slender girl, and poured out to her his hopes, his

fears, and his ambitious. He took the white, thin hand and pressed it to his lips.

She said nothing. She did not attempt to improve upon her advantage. A less consummate general might have

tried to do so, and ruined all. She stood silent and submissive, noting the quick play of thought which peeped

from his eyes and lip. There was a sparkle in the one and a twitch of amusement in the other, as he at last

"Who is to fight against such a woman?" he cried. "Oh! if I could send you to Novikoff! He is too much for

"And pray say no more about ittoday, at any rate. I have been weak over the matter."

"You have outflanked me, Clara. It was very well done. I must congratulate you."

"Well," she murmured, as she kissed him, "you know I have been studying a very clever diplomatist for thirty

Medical men are, as a class, very much too busy to take stock of singular situations or dramatic events. Thus

it happens that the ablest chronicler of their experiences in our literature was a lawyer. A life spent in

watching over deathbedsor over birthbeds which are infinitely more tryingtakes something from a

man's sense of proportion, as constant strong waters might corrupt his palate. The overstimulated nerve

ceases to respond. Ask the surgeon for his best experiences and he may reply that he has seen little that is

remarkable, or break away into the technical. But catch him some night when the fire has spurted up and his

pipe is reeking, with a few of his brother practitioners for company and an artful question or allusion to set

him going. Then you will get some raw, green facts new plucked from the tree of life.

It is after one of the quarterly dinners of the Midland Branch of the British Medical Association. Twenty

coffee cups, a dozer liqueur glasses, and a solid bank of blue smoke which swirls slowly along the high,

gilded ceiling gives a hint of a successful gathering. But the members have shredded off to their homes. The

line of heavy, bulgepocketed overcoats and of stethoscopebearing top hats is gone from the hotel corridor.

Round the fire in the sittingroom three medicos are still lingering, however, all smoking and arguing, while

a fourth, who is a mere layman and young at that, sits back at the table. Under cover of an open journal he is

writing furiously with a stylographic pen, asking a question in an innocent voice from time to time and so

The three men are all of that staid middle age which begins early and lasts late in the profession. They are

none of them famous, yet each is of good repute, and a fair type of his particular branch. The portly man with

the authoritative manner and the white, vitriol splash upon his cheek is Charley Manson, chief of the

Wormley Asylum, and author of the brilliant monographObscure Nervous Lesions in the Unmarried. He

always wears his collar high like that, since the halfsuccessful attempt of a student of Revelations to cut his

throat with a splinter of glass. The second, with the ruddy face and the merry brown eyes, is a general

practitioner, a man of vast experience, who, with his three assistants and his five horses, takes twentyfive

hundred a year in halfcrown visits and shilling consultations out of the poorest quarter of a great city. That

cheery face of Theodore Foster is seen at the side of a hundred sickbeds a day, and if he has onethird more

names on his visiting list than in his cash book he always promises himself that he will get level some day

when a millionaire with a chronic complaintthe ideal combinationshall seek his services. The third,

sitting on the right with his dress shoes shining on the top of the fender, is Hargrave, the rising surgeon. His

face has none of the broad humanity of Theodore Foster's, the eye is stern and critical, the mouth straight and

severe, but there is strength and decision in every line of it, and it is nerve rather than sympathy which the

patient demands when he is bad enough to come to Hargrave's door. He calls himself a jawman "a mere

jawman" as he modestly puts it, but in point of fact he is too young and too poor to confine himself to a

specialty, and there is nothing surgical which Hargrave has not the skill and the audacity to do.

"Before, after, and during," murmurs the general practitioner in answer to some interpolation of the outsider's.

"Ah, puerperal!" throws in the other, knocking the curved grey ash from his cigar. "But you had some case in

"Well, there was only one last week which was new to me. I had been engaged by some people of the name

of Silcoe. When the trouble came round I went myself, for they would not hear of an assistant. The husband

who was a policeman, was sitting at the head of the bed on the further side. `This won't do,' said I. `Oh yes,

doctor, it must do,' said she. `It's quite irregular and he must go,' said I. `It's that or nothing,' said she. `I won't

open my mouth or stir a finger the whole night,' said he. So it ended by my allowing him to remain, and there

he sat for eight hours on end. She was very good over the matter, but every now and again HE would fetch a

hollow groan, and I noticed that he held his right hand just under the sheet all the time, where I had no doubt

that it was clasped by her left. When it was all happily over, I looked at him and his face was the colour of

this cigar ash, and his head had dropped on to the edge of the pillow. Of course I thought he had fainted with

emotion, and I was just telling myself what I thought of myself for having been such a fool as to let him stay

there, when suddenly I saw that the sheet over his hand was all soaked with blood; I whisked it down, and

there was the fellow's wrist half cut through. The woman had one bracelet of a policeman's handcuff over her

left wrist and the other round his right one. When she had been in pain she had twisted with all her strength

and the iron had fairly eaten into the bone of the man's arm. `Aye, doctor,' said she, when she saw I had

noticed it. `He's got to take his share as well as me. Turn and turn,' said she."

"Don't you find it a very wearing branch of the profession?" asks Foster after a pause.

"Aye, and it has driven men into asylums who never found their way on to the medical staff. I was a very shy

"Well, you hear men talk about it as though it were, but I tell you it's much nearer tragedy. Take some poor,

raw, young fellow who has just put up his plate in a strange town. He has found it a trial all his life, perhaps,

to talk to a woman about lawn tennis and church services. When a young man IS shy he is shyer than any

girl. Then down comes an anxious mother and consults him upon the most intimate family matters. `I shall

never go to that doctor again,' says she afterwards. `His manner is so stiff and unsympathetic.'

Unsympathetic! Why, the poor lad was struck dumb and paralysed. I have known general practitioners who

were so shy that they could not bring themselves to ask the way in the street. Fancy what sensitive men like

that must endure before they get broken in to medical practice. And then they know that nothing is so

catching as shyness, and that if they do not keep a face of stone, their patient will be covered with confusion.

And so they keep their face of stone, and earn the reputation perhaps of having a heart to correspond. I

"Well, when a man lives year in year out among a thousand lunatics, with a fair sprinkling of homicidals

among them, one's nerves either get set or shattered. Mine are all right so far."

"I was frightened once," says the surgeon. "It was when I was doing dispensary work. One night I had a call

from some very poor people, and gathered from the few words they said that their child was ill. When I

entered the room I saw a small cradle in the corner. Raising the lamp I walked over and putting back the

curtains I looked down at the baby. I tell you it was sheer Providence that I didn't drop that lamp and set the

whole place alight. The head on the pillow turned and I saw a face looking up at me which seemed to me to

have more malignancy and wickedness than ever I had dreamed of in a nightmare. It was the flush of red over

the cheekbones, and the brooding eyes full of loathing of me, and of everything else, that impressed me. I'll

never forget my start as, instead of the chubby face of an infant, my eyes fell upon this creature. I took the

mother into the next room. `What is it?' I asked. `A girl of sixteen,' said she, and then throwing up her arms,

`Oh, pray God she may be taken!' The poor thing, though she spent her life in this little cradle, had great,

long, thin limbs which she curled up under her. I lost sight of the case and don't know what became of it, but

"That's creepy," says Dr. Foster. "But I think one of my experiences would run it close. Shortly after I put up

my plate I had a visit from a little hunchbacked woman who wished me to come and attend to her sister in

her trouble. When I reached the house, which was a very poor one, I found two other little hunchedbacked

women, exactly like the first, waiting for me in the sittingroom. Not one of them said a word, but my

companion took the lamp and walked upstairs with her two sisters behind her, and me bringing up the rear. I

can see those three queer shadows cast by the lamp upon the wall as clearly as I can see that tobacco pouch.

In the room above was the fourth sister, a remarkably beautiful girl in evident need of my assistance. There

was no wedding ring upon her finger. The three deformed sisters seated themselves round the room, like so

many graven images, and all night not one of them opened her mouth. I'm not romancing, Hargrave; this is

absolute fact. In the early morning a fearful thunderstorm broke out, one of the most violent I have ever

known. The little garret burned blue with the lightning, and thunder roared and rattled as if it were on the

very roof of the house. It wasn't much of a lamp I had, and it was a queer thing when a spurt of lightning

came to see those three twisted figures sitting round the walls, or to have the voice of my patient drowned by

the booming of the thunder. By Jove! I don't mind telling you that there was a time when I nearly bolted from

the room. All came right in the end, but I never heard the true story of the unfortunate beauty and her three

"That's the worst of these medical stories," sighs the outsider. "They never seem to have an end."

"When a man is up to his neck in practice, my boy, he has no time to gratify his private curiosity. Things

shoot across him and he gets a glimpse of them, only to recall them, perhaps, at some quiet moment like this.

But I've always felt, Manson, that your line had as much of the terrible in it as any other."

"More," groans the alienist. "A disease of the body is bad enough, but this seems to be a disease of the soul.

Is it not a shocking thinga thing to drive a reasoning man into absolute Materialismto think that you

may have a fine, noble fellow with every divine instinct and that some little vascular change, the dropping,

we will say, of a minute spicule of bone from the inner table of his skull on to the surface of his brain may

have the effect of changing him to a filthy and pitiable creature with every low and debasing tendency? What

a satire an asylum is upon the majesty of man, and no less upon the ethereal nature of the soul."

"I have no faith, not much hope, and all the charity I can afford," says the surgeon. "When theology squares

"You were talking about cases," says the outsider, jerking the ink down into his stylographic pen.

"Well, take a common complaint which kills many thousands every year, like G. P. for instance."

"The British public will have to know what G. P. is," says the alienist gravely. "It's increasing by leaps and

bounds, and it has the distinction of being absolutely incurable. General paralysis is its full title, and I tell you

it promises to be a perfect scourge. Here's a fairly typical case now which I saw last Monday week. A young

farmer, a splendid fellow, surprised his fellows by taking a very rosy view of things at a time when the whole

countryside was grumbling. He was going to give up wheat, give up arable land, too, if it didn't pay, plant

two thousand acres of rhododendrons and get a monopoly of the supply for Covent Gardenthere was no

end to his schemes, all sane enough but just a bit inflated. I called at the farm, not to see him, but on an

altogether different matter. Something about the man's way of talking struck me and I watched him narrowly.

His lip had a trick of quivering, his words slurred themselves together, and so did his handwriting when he

had occasion to draw up a small agreement. A closer inspection showed me that one of his pupils was ever so

little larger than the other. As I left the house his wife came after me. `Isn't it splendid to see Job looking so

well, doctor,' said she; `he's that full of energy he can hardly keep himself quiet.' I did not say anything, for I

had not the heart, but I knew that the fellow was as much condemned to death as though he were lying in the

"Good heavens!" cries the outsider. "My own lips tremble. I often slur my words. I believe I've got it myself."

"A great authority has said that every first year's student is suffering in silent agony from four diseases,"

remarks the surgeon. " One is heart disease, of course; another is cancer of the parotid. I forget the two

"Paresis of all the muscles, ending in fits, coma, and death. It may be a few months, it may be a year or two.

"Bytheway," says the alienist, "did I ever tell you about the first certificate I signed? I came as near ruin

"I was in practice at the time. One morning a Mrs. Cooper called upon me and informed me that her husband

had shown signs of delusions lately. They took the form of imagining that he had been in the army and had

distinguished himself very much. As a matter of fact he was a lawyer and had never been out of England.

Mrs. Cooper was of opinion that if I were to call it might alarm him, so it was agreed between us that she

should send him up in the evening on some pretext to my consultingroom, which would give me the

opportunity of having a chat with him and, if I were convinced of his insanity, of signing his certificate.

Another doctor had already signed, so that it only needed my concurrence to have him placed under

treatment. Well, Mr. Cooper arrived in the evening about half an hour before I had expected him, and

consulted me as to some malarious symptoms from which he said that he suffered. According to his account

he had just returned from the Abyssinian Campaign, and had been one of the first of the British forces to

enter Magdala. No delusion could possibly be more marked, for he would talk of little else, so I filled in the

papers without the slightest hesitation. When his wife arrived, after he had left, I put some questions to her to

complete the form. `What is his age?' I asked. `Fifty,' said she. `Fifty!' I cried. `Why, the man I examined

could not have been more than thirty! And so it came out that the real Mr. Cooper had never called upon me

at all, but that by one of those coincidences which take a man's breath away another Cooper, who really was a

very distinguished young officer of artillery, had come in to consult me. My pen was wet to sign the paper

"We were talking about nerve just now," observes the surgeon. "Just after my qualifying I served in the Navy

for a time, as I think you know. I was on the flagship on the West African Station, and I remember a

singular example of nerve which came to my notice at that time. One of our small gunboats had gone up the

Calabar river, and while there the surgeon died of coast fever. On the same day a man's leg was broken by a

spar falling upon it, and it became quite obvious that it must be taken off above the knee if his life was to be

saved. The young lieutenant who was in charge of the craft searched among the dead doctor's effects and laid

his hands upon some chloroform, a hipjoint knife, and a volume of Grey's Anatomy. He had the man laid by

the steward upon the cabin table, and with a picture of a cross section of the thigh in front of him he began to

take off the limb. Every now and then, referring to the diagram, he would say: `Stand by with the lashings,

steward. There's blood on the chart about here.' Then he would jab with his knife until he cut the artery, and

he and his assistant would tie it up before they went any further. In this way they gradually whittled the leg

off, and upon my word they made a very excellent job of it. The man is hopping about the Portsmouth Hard

"It's no joke when the doctor of one of these isolated gunboats himself falls ill," continues the surgeon after a

pause. "You might think it easy for him to prescribe for himself, but this fever knocks you down like a club,

and you haven't strength left to brush a mosquito off your face. I had a touch of it at Lagos, and I know what I

am telling you. But there was a chum of mine who really had a curious experience. The whole crew gave him

up, and, as they had never had a funeral aboard the ship, they began rehearsing the forms so as to be ready.

They thought that he was unconscious, but he swears he could hear every word that passed. `Corpse comin'

up the latchway!' cried the Cockney sergeant of Marines. `Present harms!' He was so amused, and so

indignant too, that he just made up his mind that he wouldn't be carried through that hatchway, and he wasn't,

"There's no need for fiction in medicine," remarks Foster, "for the facts will always beat anything you can

fancy. But it has seemed to me sometimes that a curious paper might be read at some of these meetings about

"Well, of what the folk die of, and what diseases are made most use of in novels. Some are worn to pieces,

and others, which are equally common in real life, are never mentioned. Typhoid is fairly frequent, but scarlet

fever is unknown. Heart disease is common, but then heart disease, as we know it, is usually the sequel of

some foregoing disease, of which we never hear anything in the romance. Then there is the mysterious

malady called brain fever, which always attacks the heroine after a crisis, but which is unknown under that

name to the text books. People when they are overexcited in novels fall down in a fit. In a fairly large

experience I have never known anyone do so in real life. The small complaints simply don't exist. Nobody

ever gets shingles or quinsy, or mumps in a novel. All the diseases, too, belong to the upper part of the body.

"I'll tell you what, Foster," says the alienist, there is a side of life which is too medical for the general public

and too romantic for the professional journals, but which contains some of the richest human materials that a

man could study. It's not a pleasant side, I am afraid, but if it is good enough for Providence to create, it is

good enough for us to try and understand. It would deal with strange outbursts of savagery and vice in the

lives of the best men, curious momentary weaknesses in the record of the sweetest women, known but to one

or two, and inconceivable to the world around. It would deal, too, with the singular phenomena of waxing

and of waning manhood, and would throw a light upon those actions which have cut short many an honoured

career and sent a man to a prison when he should have been hurried to a consultingroom. Of all evils that

"I had a case some little time ago which was out of the ordinary," says the surgeon. "There's a famous beauty

in London societyI mention no names who used to be remarkable a few seasons ago for the very low

dresses which she would wear. She had the whitest of skins and most beautiful of shoulders, so it was no

wonder. Then gradually the frilling at her neck lapped upwards and upwards, until last year she astonished

everyone by wearing quite a high collar at a time when it was completely out of fashion. Well, one day this

very woman was shown into my consultingroom. When the footman was gone she suddenly tore off the

upper part of her dress. `For Gods sake do something for me!' she cried. Then I saw what the trouble was. A

rodent ulcer was eating its way upwards, coiling on in its serpiginous fashion until the end of it was flush

with her collar. The red streak of its trail was lost below the line of her bust. Year by year it had ascended and

she had heightened her dress to hide it, until now it was about to invade her face. She had been too proud to

"Well, with zinc chloride I did what I could. But it may break out again. She was one of those beautiful

whiteandpink creatures who are rotten with struma. You may patch but you can't mend."

"Dear! dear! dear!" cries the general practitioner, with that kindly softening of the eyes which had endeared

him to so many thousands. "I suppose we mustn't think ourselves wiser than Providence, but there are times

when one feels that something is wrong in the scheme of things. I've seen some sad things in my life. Did I

ever tell you that case where Nature divorced a most loving couple? He was a fine young fellow, an athlete

and a gentleman, but he overdid athletics. You know how the force that controls us gives us a little tweak to

remind us when we get off the beaten track. It may be a pinch on the great toe if we drink too much and work

too little. Or it may be a tug on our nerves if we dissipate energy too much. With the athlete, of course, it's the

heart or the lungs. He had bad phthisis and was sent to Davos. Well, as luck would have it, she developed

rheumatic fever, which left her heart very much affected. Now, do you see the dreadful dilemma in which

those poor people found themselves? When he came below four thousand feet or so, his symptoms became

terrible. She could come up about twentyfive hundred and then her heart reached its limit. They had several

interviews half way down the valley, which left them nearly dead, and at last, the doctors had to absolutely

forbid it. And so for four years they lived within three miles of each other and never met. Every morning he

would go to a place which overlooked the chalet in which she lived and would wave a great white cloth and

she answer from below. They could see each other quite plainly with their field glasses, and they might have

"No, sir. I'm sorry not to be able to clinch the story, but the man recovered and is now a successful

stockbroker in Drapers Gardens. The woman, too, is the mother of a considerable family. But what are you

"Why, we've done nothing but talk shop," says the general practitioner. "What possible interest can the public

Of the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee, and of the cause of the great terror of

Abercrombie Smith, it may be that no absolute and final judgment will ever be delivered. It is true that we

have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself, and such corroboration as he could look for from Thomas

Styles the servant, from the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old's, and from such other people as

chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the

story must rest upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that one brain, however

outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture, some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of

Nature has been overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as the University of

Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it,

for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities

loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and confident man who will put a limit to the strange bypaths into

In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age.

The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years,

and the grey, lichenblotched blocks of stone are, bound and knitted together with withes and strands of ivy,

as though the old mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From the door a stone

stair curves upward spirally, passing two landings, and terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and

hollowed by the tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has flowed like water

down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left these smoothworn grooves behind it. From the longgowned,

pedantic scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age, how full and strong had been

that tide of young English life. And what was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies,

save here and there in some oldworld churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of

dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and

many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from the

In the month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the sets of rooms which opened on to the

separate landings of the old stair. Each set consisted simply of a sittingroom and of a bedroom, while the

two corresponding rooms upon the groundfloor were used, the one as a coalcellar, and the other as the

livingroom of the servant, or gyp, Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him.

To right and to left was a line of lecturerooms and of offices, so that the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a

certain seclusion, which made the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were the

three who occupied them nowAbercrombie Smith above, Edward Bellingham beneath him, and William

It was ten o'clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his armchair, his feet upon

the fender, and his briarroot pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged

on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had

spent their evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their hardcut, alert faces

without seeing that they were openair menmen whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was

manly and robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke of his college boat, and Smith was an even better oar, but a

coming examination had already cast its shadow over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a

week which health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with scattered bones, models and

anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of singlesticks and

a set of boxinggloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which, with Hastie's help, he might take

his exercise in its most compressed and least distant form. They knew each other very wellso well that

they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest development of companionship.

"Have some whisky," said Abercrombie Smith at last between two cloudbursts. "Scotch in the jug and Irish in

"No, thanks. I'm in for the sculls. I don't liquor when I'm training. How about you?"

"Bytheway, Smith," asked Hastie, presently, have you made the acquaintance of either of the fellows on

"Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of them both. Not much, but as much as I

want. I don't think I should take them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there's much amiss with

"Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don't think there is any vice in him. But then you can't know

"What's up, then?" he asked. "Drink? Cards? Cad? You used not to be censorious."

"Ah! you evidently don't know the man, or you wouldn't ask. There's something damnable about him

something reptilian. My gorge always rises at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vicesan

evil liver. He's no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his line that they have ever had in

"Eastern languages. He's a demon at them. Chillingworth met him somewhere above the second cataract last

long, and he told me that he just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned among

them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all

ready to kiss the hem of his frockcoat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who sit on

rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when they saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said

five words they just lay down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he never saw anything

like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right, too, and strutted about among them and talked down to them

"Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright little girl, Smith! I know the whole

family well. It's disgusting to see that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that's what they always remind me

Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of the grate.

"You show every card in your hand, old chap," said he. "What a prejudiced, greeneyed, evilthinking old

"Well, I've known her ever since she was as long as that cherrywood pipe, and I don't like to see her taking

risks. And it is a risk. He looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You remember his

"Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along by the river. There were several fellows

going along it, Bellingham in front, when they came on an old marketwoman coming the other way. It had

been rainingyou know what those fields are like when it has rainedand the path ran between the river

and a great puddle that was nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path, and push the old

girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and

Long Norton, who is as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it. One word led to

another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across the fellow's shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss

about it, and it's a treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when they meet now. By Jove,

"Not I. I'm supposed to be in training. Here I've been sitting gossiping when I ought to have been safely

tucked up. I'll borrow your skull, if you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I'll take the little

bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won't need them. Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry

them very well under my arm. Goodnight, my son, and take my tip as to your neighbour."

When Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the winding stair, Abercrombie Smith

hurled his pipe into the wastepaper basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a

formidable greencovered volume, adorned with great colored maps of that strange internal kingdom of

which we are the hapless and helpless monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in

medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and this coming examination would

place him finally as a member of his profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clearcut,

somewhat hardfeatured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was yet so dogged, so patient,

and so strong that he might in the end overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among

Scotchmen and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a name at Glasgow and at

Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.

He had sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy carriage clock upon the side table were

rapidly closing together upon the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student's eara sharp, rather

shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man's breath who gasps under some strong emotion. Smith laid down

his book and slanted his ear to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the interruption

came certainly from the neighbour beneaththe same neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavoury an

account. Smith knew him only as a flabby, palefaced man of silent and studious habits, a man, whose lamp

threw a golden bar from the old turret even after he had extinguished his own. This community in lateness

had formed a certain silent bond between them. It was soothing to Smith when the hours stole on towards

dawning to feel that there was another so close who set as small a value upon his sleep as he did. Even now,

as his thoughts turned towards him, Smith's feelings were kindly. Hastie was a good fellow, but he was

rough, strongfibred, with no imagination or sympathy. He could not tolerate departures from what he looked

upon as the model type of manliness. If a man could not be measured by a publicschool standard, then he

was beyond the pale with Hastie. Like so many who are themselves robust, he was apt to confuse the

constitution with the character, to ascribe to want of principle what was really a want of circulation. Smith,

with his stronger mind, knew his friend's habit, and made allowance for it now as his thoughts turned towards

There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn to his work once more, when

suddenly there broke out in the silence of the night a hoarse cry, a positive screamthe call of a man who is

moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and dropped his book. He was a man of

fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his

blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic

possibilities into his head. Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national hatred of

making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that he would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a

moment he stood in doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of footsteps upon the

stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half dressed and as white as ashes, burst into his room.

Abercrombie Smith followed him closely down stairs into the sittingroom which was beneath his own, and

intent as he was upon the matter in hand, he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed

the threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen beforea museum rather than a study. Walls and

ceiling were thickly covered with a thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures

bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the apartments. Above were bullheaded,

storkheaded, catheaded, owlheaded statues, with vipercrowned, almondeyed monarchs, and strange,

beetlelike deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from

every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hangingjawed crocodile, was

In the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table, littered with papers, bottles, and the dried

leaves of some graceful, palmlike plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in order to make

room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid

across the front of the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a charred head on a

gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with its clawlike hand and bony forearm resting upon the table.

Propped up against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in front of it, in a wooden

armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head thrown back, his widelyopened eyes directed in a horrified

stare to the crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every expiration.

He was a slim, handsome young fellow, oliveskinned and darkeyed, of a Spanish rather than of an English

type, with a Celtic intensity of manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercombie Smith.

"Only a faint, I think," said the medical student. "Just give me a hand with him. You take his feet. Now on to

the sofa. Can you kick all those little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will be all right if we

"I don't know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty well, you know. It is very good of you to come

"His heart is going like a pair of castanets," said Smith, laying his hand on the breast of the unconscious man.

"He seems to me to be frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has got on him!"

It was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline were equally unnatural. It was white,

not with the ordinary pallor of fear but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the under side of a sole. He

was very fat, but gave the impression of having at some time been considerably fatter, for his skin hung

loosely in creases and folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown hair bristled up

from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears protruding on either side. His light grey eyes were still

open, the pupils dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare. It seemed to Smith as he looked

down upon him that he had never seen nature's danger signals flying so plainly upon a man's countenance,

and his thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had given him an hour before.

"I don't know. It's beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it. It's the second fright he has given me. It was

the same last winter. I found him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him."

"Oh, he's a crank, you know. It's his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But

A faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellingham's ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like

a sail after a calm. He clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his teeth, and

suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he

sprang off the sofa, seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key, and then staggered back

"You've been shrieking out and making no end of a fuss," said Monkhouse Lee. "If our neighbour here from

above hadn't come down, I'm sure I don't know what I should have done with you."

"Ah, it's Abercrombie Smith," said Bellingham, glancing up at him. "How very good of you to come in! What

He sunk his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of hysterical laughter.

"Your nerves are all in a jangle. You must drop these little midnight games with mummies, or you'll be going

"I wonder," said Bellingham, "whether you would be as cool as I am if you had seen"

"Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a mummy without trying your nerves. I

have no doubt that you are quite right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much lately. But

I am all right now. Please don't go, though. Just wait for a few minutes until I am quite myself."

"The room is very close," remarked Lee, throwing open the window and letting in the cool night air.

"It's balsamic resin," said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried palmate leaves from the table and frizzled

it over the chimney of the lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting odour filled

the chamber. "It's the sacred plantthe plant of the priests," he remarked. "Do you know anything of Eastern

"Bytheway," he continued, "how long was it from the time that you ran down, until I came to my senses?"

"I thought it could not be very long," said he, drawing a long breath. "But what a strange thing

unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds

or weeks. Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the eleventh dynasty, some forty

centuries ago, and yet if he could find his tongue he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a

closing of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy, Smith."

Smith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye at the black and twisted form in

front of him. The features, though horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nutlike eyes still lurked

in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was drawn tightly from bone to bone, and a

tangled wrap of black coarse hair fell over the ears. Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the shrivelled

lower lip. In its crouching position, with bent joints and craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about

the horrid thing which made Smith's gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchmentlike covering, were

exposed, and the sunken, leadenhued abdomen, with the long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but

the lower limbs were wrapt round with coarse yellow bandages. A number of little clovelike pieces of myrrh

and of cassia were sprinkled over the body, and lay scattered on the inside of the case.

"I don't know his name," said Bellingham, passing his hand over the shrivelled head. "You see the outer

sarcophagus with the inscriptions is missing. Lot 249 is all the title he has now. You see it printed on his case.

"He has been a very pretty sort of fellow in his day," remarked Abercrombie Smith.

"He has been a giant. His mummy is six feet seven in length, and that would be a giant over there, for they

were never a very robust race. Feel these great knotted bones, too. He would be a nasty fellow to tackle."

"Perhaps these very hands helped to build the stones into the pyramids," suggested Monkhouse Lee, looking

"No fear. This fellow has been pickled in natron, and looked after in the most approved style. They did not

serve hodsmen in that fashion. Salt or bitumen was enough for them. It has been calculated that this sort of

thing cost about seven hundred and thirty pounds in our money. Our friend was a noble at the least. What do

"Ah, so you did. It is the name of the embalmer, I take it. A very conscientious worker he must have been. I

He kept on speaking lightly and rapidly, but it was evident to Abercrombie Smith that he was still palpitating

with fear. His hands shook, his lower lip trembled, and look where he would, his eye always came sliding

round to his gruesome companion. Through all his fear, however, there was a suspicion of triumph in his tone

and manner. His eye shone, and his footstep, as he paced the room, was brisk and jaunty. He gave the

impression of a man who has gone through an ordeal, the marks of which he still bears upon him, but which

At the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him, and he stretched out a hand to detain

"Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I think that with your nervous system you

"Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of electricity. You are not going, Lee?"

"Then I'll come down with you and have a shakedown on your sofa. Goodnight, Smith. I am so sorry to

They shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and irregular stair he heard a key turn in

a door, and the steps of his two new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.

In this strange way began the acquaintance between Edward Bellingham and Abercrombie Smith, an

acquaintance which the latter, at least, had no desire to push further. Bellingham, however, appeared to have

taken a fancy to his roughspoken neighbour, and made his advances in such a way that he could hardly be

repulsed without absolute brutality. Twice he called to thank Smith for his assistance, and many times

afterwards he looked in with books, papers, and such other civilities as two bachelor neighbours can offer

each other. He was, as Smith soon found, a man of wide reading, with catholic tastes and an extraordinary

memory. His manner, too, was so pleasing and suave that one came, after a time, to overlook his repellent

appearance. For a jaded and wearied man he was no unpleasant companion, and Smith found himself, after a

Clever as he undoubtedly was, however, the medical student seemed to detect a dash of insanity in the man.

He broke out at times into a high, inflated style of talk which was in contrast with the simplicity of his life.

"It is a wonderful thing," he cried, "to feel that one can command powers of good and of evila ministering

angel or a demon of vengeance." And again, of Monkhouse Lee, he said,"Lee is a good fellow, an honest

fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He would not make a fit partner for a man with a great

At such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his pipe, would simply raise his eyebrows and

shake his head, with little interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air.

One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a frequent herald of a weakening mind.

He appeared to be forever talking to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor with

him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and

yet very audible in the silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so that he spoke

more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham, however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly

that he had uttered a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the occasion seemed to

Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go far to find corroboration. Tom

Styles, the little wrinkled manservant who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer

time than any man's memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over the same matter.

"If you please, sir," said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one morning, "do you think Mr. Bellingham is

"Well, I don't know, sir. His habits has changed of late. He's not the same man he used to be, though I make

free to say that he was never quite one of my gentlemen, like Mr. Hastie or yourself, sir. He's took to talkin' to

himself something awful. I wonder it don't disturb you. I don't know what to make of him, sir."

"Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I can't help it. I feel sometimes as if I was

mother and father to my young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the relations come.

But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he's out and

Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old manservant, but a small incident occurred a few

days later which left an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his

Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining him with an interesting account of

the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly

Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the expression of a man who is half incredulous

"I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it," he stammered. "No one could have opened it."

Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him, and hurried down the stairs. About

halfway down Smith heard him stop, and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the

door beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of moisture upon his pale face,

"It's all right," he said, throwing himself down in a chair. "It was that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door

"I didn't know you kept a dog," said Smith, looking very thoughtfully at the disturbed face of his companion.

"He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have thought that shutting the door would have

"I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He's of some value, you know, and it would be awkward to

"I am a bit of a dogfancier myself," said Smith, still gazing hard at his companion from the corner of his

"Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be tonight; I have an appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a

He picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his appointment, Smith heard him reenter his

This interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical student's mind. Bellingham had lied to him,

and lied so clumsily that it looked as if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that his

neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had heard upon the stairs was not the step of an

animal. But if it were not, then what could it be? There was old Styles's statement about the something which

used to pace the room at times when the owner was absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the

view. If so, it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered by the authorities, so

that his anxiety and falsehoods might be accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate

could keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the explanation what it might, there

was something ugly about it, and Smith determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further

But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly caught tip the broken threads when a firm,

heavy footfall came three steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst into the room.

"Still at it!" said he, plumping down into his wonted armchair. "What a chap you are to stew! I believe an

earthquake might come and knock Oxford into a cocked hat, and you would sit perfectly placid with your

books among the rains. However, I won't bore you long. Three whiffs of baccy, and I am off."

"What's the news, then?" asked Smith, cramming a plug of bird'seye into his briar with his forefinger.

"Nothing very much. Wilson made 70 for the freshmen against the eleven. They say that they will play him

instead of Buddicomb, for Buddicomb is clean off colour. He used to be able to bowl a little, but it's nothing

"Medium right," suggested Smith, with the intense gravity which comes upon a 'varsity man when he speaks

"Inclining to fast, with a work from leg. Comes with the arm about three inches or so. He used to be nasty on

"Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a hundred yards of the gate of Old's."

"Ah, that's the rub! If you said `what,' you would be more grammatical. Norton swears that it was not human,

and, indeed, from the scratches on his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him."

"Well, no; I don't think that is quite the idea, either. I am inclined to think that if any showman has lost a

great ape lately, and the brute is in these parts, a jury would find a true bill against it. Norton passes that way

every night, you know, about the same hour. There's a tree that hangs low over the paththe big elm from

Rainy's garden. Norton thinks the thing dropped on him out of the tree. Anyhow, he was nearly strangled by

two arms, which, he says, were as strong and as thin as steel bands. He saw nothing; only those beastly arms

that tightened and tightened on him. He yelled his head nearly off, and a couple of chaps came running, and

the thing went over the wall like a cat. He never got a fair sight of it the whole time. It gave Norton a shake

up, I can tell you. I tell him it has been as good as a change at the seaside for him."

"Very possibly. Norton says not; but we don't mind what he says. The garrotter had long nails, and was pretty

smart at swinging himself over walls. Bytheway, your beautiful neighbour would be pleased if he heard

about it. He had a grudge against Norton, and he's not a man, from what I know of him, to forget his little

He had started in his chair, and the look had flashed over his face which comes upon a man who is struck

"You looked as if something I had said had taken you on the raw. Bytheway, you have made the

acquaintance of Master B. since I looked in last, have you not? Young Monkhouse Lee told me something to

"Well, you're big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself. He's not what I should call exactly a

healthy sort of Johnny, though, no doubt, he's very clever, and all that. But you'll soon find out for yourself.

Lee is all right; he's a very decent little fellow. Well, so long, old chap! I row Mullins for the

ViceChancellor's pot on Wednesday week, so mind you come down, in case I don't see you before."

Bovine Smith laid down his pipe and turned stolidly to his books once more. But with all the will in the

world, he found it very hard to keep his mind upon his work. It would slip away to brood upon the man

beneath him, and upon the little mystery which hung round his chambers. Then his thoughts turned to this

singular attack of which Hastie had spoken, and to the grudge which Bellingham was said to owe the object

of it. The two ideas would persist in rising together in his mind, as though there were some close and intimate

connection between them. And yet the suspicion was so dim and vague that it could not be put down in

"Confound the chap!" cried Smith, as he shied his book on pathology across the room. "He has spoiled my

night's reading, and that's reason enough, if there were no other, why I should steer clear of him in the

For ten days the medical student confined himself so closely to his studies that he neither saw nor heard

anything of either of the men beneath him. At the hours when Bellingham had been accustomed to visit him,

he took care to sport his oak, and though he more than once heard a knocking at his outer door, he resolutely

refused to answer it. One afternoon, however, he was descending the stairs when, just as he was passing it,

Bellingham's door flew open, and young Monkhouse Lee came out with his eyes sparkling and a dark flush

of anger upon his olive cheeks. Close at his heels followed Bellingham, his fat, unhealthy face all quivering

"Very likely," cried the other. "Mind what I say. It's off! I won't hear of it!"

"Oh, I'll keep that! I won't speak. But I'd rather little Eva was in her grave. Once for all, it's off. She'll do what

So much Smith could not avoid hearing, but he hurried on, for he had no wish to be involved in their dispute.

There had been a serious breach between them, that was clear enough, and Lee was going to cause the

engagement with his sister to be broken off. Smith thought of Hastie's comparison of the toad and the dove,

and was glad to think that the matter was at an end. Bellingham's face when he was in a passion was not

pleasant to look upon. He was not a man to whom an innocent girl could be trusted for life. As he walked,

Smith wondered languidly what could have caused the quarrel, and what the promise might be which

It was the day of the sculling match between Hastie and Mullins, and a stream of men were making their way

down to the banks of the Isis. A May sun was shining brightly, and the yellow path was barred with the black

shadows of the tall elmtrees. On either side the grey colleges lay back from the road, the hoary old mothers of

minds looking out from their high, mullioned windows at the tide of young life which swept so merrily past

them. Blackclad tutors, prim officials, pale reading men, brownfaced, strawhatted young athletes in white

sweaters or manycoloured blazers, all were hurrying towards the blue winding river which curves through

Abercrombie Smith, with the intuition of an old oarsman, chose his position at the point where he knew that

the struggle, if there were a struggle, would come. Far off he heard the hum which announced the start, the

gathering roar of the approach, the thunder of running feet, and the shouts of the men in the boats beneath

him. A spray of halfclad, deepbreathing runners shot past him, and craning over their shoulders, he saw

Hastie pulling a steady thirtysix, while his opponent, with a jerky forty, was a good boat's length behind

him. Smith gave a cheer for his friend, and pulling out his watch, was starting off again for his chambers,

when he felt a touch upon his shoulder, and found that young Monkhouse Lee was beside him.

"I saw you there," he said, in a timid, deprecating way. "I wanted to speak to you, if you could spare me a

halfhour. This cottage is mine. I share it with Harrington of King's. Come in and have a cup of tea."

"I must be back presently," said Smith. "I am hard on the grind at present. But I'll come in for a few minutes

"So he is of mine. Hasn't he a beautiful style? Mullins wasn't in it. But come into the cottage. It's a little den

It was a small, square, white building, with green doors and shutters, and a rustic trelliswork porch, standing

back some fifty yards from the river's bank. Inside, the main room was roughly fitted up as a studydeal

table, unpainted shelves with books, and a few cheap oleographs upon the wall. A kettle sang upon a

"Try that chair and have a cigarette," said Lee. "Let me pour you out a cup of tea. It's so good of you to come

in, for I know that your time is a good deal taken up. I wanted to say to you that, if I were you, I should

Smith sat staring with a lighted match in one hand and his unlit cigarette in the other.

"Yes; it must seem very extraordinary, and the worst of it is that I cannot give my reasons, for I am under a

solemn promisea very solemn promise. But I may go so far as to say that I don't think Bellingham is a very

"Ah, that's what I mustn't say. But do take my advice, and move your rooms. We had a grand row today. You

"He's a horrible chap, Smith. That is the only word for him. I have had doubts about him ever since that night

when he faintedyou remember, when you came down. I taxed him today, and he told me things that made

my hair rise, and wanted me to stand in with him. I'm not straitlaced, but I am a clergyman's son, you know,

and I think there are some things which are quite beyond the pale. I only thank God that I found him out

"This is all very fine, Lee," said Abercrombie Smith curtly. "But either you are saying a great deal too much

"If there is real reason for warning, no promise can bind you. If I see a rascal about to blow a place up with

"I can't tell you. I can only entreat you to change your rooms. You are in danger where you are. I don't even

say that Bellingham would wish to injure you. But it might happen, for he is a dangerous neighbour just

"Perhaps I know more than you think," said Smith, looking keenly at the young man's boyish, earnest face.

"Well, anyhow," said Smith, rising, "it is not likely that I should allow myself to be frightened out of rooms

which suit me very nicely. It would be a little too feeble for me to move out all my goods and chattels

because you say that Bellingham might in some unexplained way do me an injury. I think that I'll just take

my chance, and stay where I am, and as I see that it's nearly five o'clock, I must ask you to excuse me."

He bade the young student adieu in a few curt words, and made his way homeward through the sweet spring

evening feeling halfruffled, halfamused, as any other strong, unimaginative man might who has been

There was one little indulgence which Abercrombie Smith always allowed himself, however closely his work

might press upon him. Twice a week, on the Tuesday and the Friday, it was his invariable custom to walk

over to Farlingford, the residence of Dr. Plumptree Peterson, situated about a mile and a half out of Oxford.

Peterson had been a close friend of Smith's elder brother Francis, and as he was a bachelor, fairly welltodo,

with a good cellar and a better library, his house was a pleasant goal for a man who was in need of a brisk

walk. Twice a week, then, the medical student would swing out there along the dark country roads, and spend

a pleasant hour in Peterson's comfortable study, discussing, over a glass of old port, the gossip of the 'varsity

On the day which followed his interview with Monkhouse Lee, Smith shut up his books at a quarter past

eight, the hour when he usually started for his friend's house. As he was leaving his room, however, his eyes

chanced to fall upon one of the books which Bellingham had lent him, and his conscience pricked him for not

having returned it. However repellent the man might be, he should not be treated with discourtesy. Taking the

book, he walked downstairs and knocked at his neighbour's door. There was no answer; but on turning the

handle he found that it was unlocked. Pleased at the thought of avoiding an interview, he stepped inside, and

The lamp was turned half down, but Smith could see the details of the room plainly enough. It was all much

as he had seen it beforethe frieze, the animalheaded gods, the banging crocodile, and the table littered

over with papers and dried leaves. The mummy case stood upright against the wall, but the mummy itself was

missing. There was no sign of any second occupant of the room, and he felt as he withdrew that he had

probably done Bellingham an injustice. Had he a guilty secret to preserve, he would hardly leave his door

The spiral stair was as black as pitch, and Smith was slowly making his way down its irregular steps, when he

was suddenly conscious that something had passed him in the darkness. There was a faint sound, a whiff of

air, a light brushing past his elbow, but so slight that he could scarcely be certain of it. He stopped and

listened, but the wind was rustling among the ivy outside, and he could hear nothing else.

There was no answer, and all was still behind him. It must have been a sudden gust of air, for there were

crannies and cracks in the old turret. And yet he could almost have sworn that be heard a footfall by his very

side. He had emerged into the quadrangle, still turning the matter over in his head, when a man came running

"For God's sake come at once! Young Lee is drowned! Here's Harrington of King's with the news. The doctor

Smith bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time, seized the flask, and was rushing down with it, when, as

he passed Bellingham's room, his eyes fell upon something which left him gasping and staring upon the

The door, which he had closed behind him, was now open, and right in front of him, with the lamplight

shining upon it, was the mummy case. Three minutes ago it had been empty. He could swear to that. Now it

framed the lank body of its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and stark, with his black shrivelled face

towards the door. The form was lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still lingered a

lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the

hollow sockets. So astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand, and was still staring at the

"Come on, Smith!" he shouted. "It's life and death, you know. Hurry up! Now, then," he added, as the

medical student reappeared, "let us do a sprint. It is well under a mile, and we should do it in five minutes. A

Neck and neck they dashed through the darkness, and did not pull up until, panting and spent, they had

reached the little cottage by the river. Young Lee, limp and dripping like a broken waterplant, was stretched

upon the sofa, the green scum of the river upon his black hair, and a fringe of white foam upon his

leadenhued lips. Beside him knelt his fellowstudent Harrington, endeavouring to chafe some warmth back

"I think there's life in him," said Smith, with his hand to the lad's side. "Put your watch glass to his lips. Yes,

there's dimming on it. You take one arm, Hastie. Now work it as I do, and we'll soon pull him round."

For ten minutes they worked in silence, inflating and depressing the chest of the unconscious man. At the end

of that time a shiver ran through his body, his lips trembled, and he opened his eyes. The three students burst

"He's all right now," said his companion Harrington. "Heavens, what a fright I got! I was reading here, and he

had gone for a stroll as far as the river, when I heard a scream and a splash. Out I ran, and by the time that I

could find him and fish him out, all life seemed to have gone. Then Simpson couldn't get a doctor, for he has

a gameleg, and I had to run, and I don't know what I'd have done without you fellows. That's right, old chap.

"I was thrown in. I was standing by the bank, and something from behind picked me up like a feather and

hurled me in. I heard nothing, and I saw nothing. But I know what it was, for all that."

Lee looked up with a quick glance of surprise. "You've learned, then!" he said. "You remember the advice I

"I don't know what the deuce you fellows are talking about," said Hastie, "but I think, if I were you,

Harrington, I should get Lee to bed at once. It will be time enough to discuss the why and the wherefore when

he is a little stronger. I think, Smith, you and I can leave him alone now. I am walking back to college; if you

But it was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith's mind was too full of the incidents of the

evening, the absence of the mummy from his neighbour's rooms, the step that passed him on the stair, the

reappearancethe extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance of the grisly thingand then this attack upon

Lee, corresponding so closely to the previous outrage upon another man against whom Bellingham bore a

grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together with the many little incidents which had previously turned

him against his neighbour, and the singular circumstances under which he was first called in to him. What

had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic conjecture, had suddenly taken form, and stood out in his mind

as a grim fact, a thing not to be denied. And yet, how monstrous it was! how unheard of! how entirely beyond

all bounds of human experience. An impartial judge, or even the friend who walked by his side, would simply

tell him that his eyes had deceived him, that the mummy had been there all the time, that young Lee had

tumbled into the river as any other man tumbles into a river, and that a blue pill was the best thing for a

disordered liver. He felt that he would have said as much if the positions had been reversed. And yet he could

swear that Bellingham was a murderer at heart, and that he wielded a weapon such as no man had ever used

Hastie had branched off to his rooms with a few crisp and emphatic comments upon his friend's unsociability,

and Abercrombie Smith crossed the quadrangle to his corner turret with a strong feeling of repulsion for his

chambers and their associations. He would take Lee's advice, and move his quarters as soon as possible, for

how could a man study when his ear was ever straining for every murmur or footstep in the room below? He

observed, as he crossed over the lawn, that the light was still shining in Bellingham's window, and as he

passed up the staircase the door opened, and the man himself looked out at him. With his fat, evil face he was

"No? You are busy as ever? I wanted to ask you about Lee. I was sorry to hear that there was a rumour that

His features were grave, but there was the gleam of a hidden laugh in his eyes as he spoke. Smith saw it, and

"You'll be sorrier still to hear that Monkhouse Lee is doing very well, and is out of all danger," he answered.

"Your hellish tricks have not come off this time. Oh, you needn't try to brazen it out. I know all about it."

Bellingham took a step back from the angry student, and halfclosed the door as if to protect himself.

"You are mad," he said. "What do you mean? Do you assert that I had anything to do with Lee's accident?"

"Yes," thundered Smith. "You and that bag of bones behind you; you worked it between you. I tell you what

it is, Master B., they have given up burning folk like you, but we still keep a hangman, and, by George! if any

man in this college meets his death while you are here, I'll have you up, and if you don't swing for it, it won't

be my fault. You'll find that your filthy Egyptian tricks won't answer in England."

"All right. You just remember what I say, for you'll find that I'll be better than my word."

The door slammed, and Smith went fuming up to his chamber, where he locked the door upon the inside, and

spent half the night in smoking his old briar and brooding over the strange events of the evening.

Next morning Abercrombie Smith heard nothing of his neighbour, but Harrington called upon him in the

afternoon to say that Lee was almost himself again. All day Smith stuck fast to his work, but in the evening

he determined to pay the visit to his friend Dr. Peterson upon which he had started upon the night before. A

Bellingham's door was shut as he passed, but glancing back when he was some distance from the turret, he

saw his neighbour's head at the window outlined against the lamplight, his face pressed apparently against

the glass as he gazed out into the darkness. It was a blessing to be away from all contact with him, but if for a

few hours, and Smith stepped out briskly, and breathed the soft spring air into his lungs. The halfmoon lay

in the west between two Gothic pinnacles, and threw upon the silvered street a dark tracery from the

stonework above. There was a brisk breeze, and light, fleecy clouds drifted swiftly across the sky. Old's was

on the very border of the town, and in five minutes Smith found himself beyond the houses and between the

It was a lonely and little frequented road which led to his friend's house. Early as it was, Smith did not meet a

single soul upon his way. He walked briskly along until he came to the avenue gate, which opened into the

long gravel drive leading up to Farlingford. In front of him he could see the cosy red light of the windows

glimmering through the foliage. He stood with his hand upon the iron latch of the swinging gate, and he

glanced back at the road along which he had come. Something was coming swiftly down it.

It moved in the shadow of the hedge, silently and furtively, a dark, crouching figure, dimly visible against the

black background. Even as he gazed back at it, it had lessened its distance by twenty paces, and was fast

closing upon him. Out of the darkness he had a glimpse of a scraggy neck, and of two eyes that will ever

haunt him in his dreams. He turned, and with a cry of terror he ran for his life up the avenue. There were the

red lights, the signals of safety, almost within a stone's throw of him. He was a famous runner, but never had

The heavy gate had swung into place behind him, but he heard it dash open again before his pursuer. As he

rushed madly and wildly through the night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see, as he

threw back a glance, that this horror was bounding like a tiger at his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy

arm outthrown. Thank God, the door was ajar. He could see the thin bar of light which shot from the lamp in

the hall. Nearer yet sounded the clatter from behind. He heard a hoarse gurgling at his very shoulder. With a

shriek he flung himself against the door, slammed and bolted it behind him, and sank halffainting on to the

"My goodness, Smith, what's the matter?" asked Peterson, appearing at the door of his study.

"You need it," he said, as his visitor drank off what he poured out for him. "Why, man, you are as white as a

"I am my own man again now," said he. "I was never so unmanned before. But, with your leave, Peterson, I

will sleep here tonight, for I don't think I could face that road again except by daylight. It's weak, I know,

"Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I'll tell Mrs. Burney to make up the spare bed. Where are you off

"Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to see what I have seen."

They went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look down upon the approach to the house.

The drive and the fields on either side lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.

"Well, really, Smith," remarked Peterson, "it is well that I know you to be an abstemious man. What in the

"I'll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now look, look! See the curve of the road just beyond

"Yes, I see; you needn't pinch my arm off. I saw someone pass. I should say a man, rather thin, apparently,

and tall, very tall. But what of him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an aspen leaf."

"I have been within handgrip of the devil, that's all. But come down to your study, and I shall tell you the

He did so. Under the cheery lamplight, with a glass of wine on the table beside him, and the portly form and

florid face of his friend in front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small, which had formed

so singular a chain, from the night on which he had found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case

"There now," he said as he concluded, "that's the whole black business. It is monstrous and incredible, but it

Dr. Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very puzzled expression upon his face.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!" he said at last. "You have told me the facts. Now tell me

"But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter, and I have not."

"Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to me to be clear enough. This fellow

Bellingham, in his Eastern studies, has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummyor possibly

only this particular mummycan be temporarily brought to life. He was trying this disgusting business on

the night when he fainted. No doubt the sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he

had expected it. You remember that almost the first words he said were to call out upon himself as a fool.

Well, he got more hardened afterwards, and carried the matter through without fainting. The vitality which he

could put into it was evidently only a passing thing, for I have seen it continually in its case as dead as this

table. He has some elaborate process, I fancy, by which he brings the thing to pass. Having done it, he

naturally bethought him that he might use the creature as an agent. It has intelligence and it has strength. For

some purpose he took Lee into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent Christian, would have nothing to do

with such a business. Then they had a row, and Lee vowed that he would tell his sister of Bellingham's true

character. Bellingham's game was to prevent him, and he nearly managed it, by setting this creature of his on

his track. He had already tried its powers upon another manNorton towards whom he had a grudge. It is

the merest chance that he has not two murders upon his soul. Then, when I taxed him with the matter, he had

the strongest reasons for wishing to get me out of the way before I could convey my knowledge to anyone

else. He got his chance when I went out, for he knew my habits, and where I was bound for. I have had a

narrow shave, Peterson, and it is mere luck you didn't find me on your doorstep in the morning. I'm not a

nervous man as a rule, and I never thought to have the fear of death put upon me as it was tonight."

"My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously," said his companion. "Your nerves are out of order with

your work, and you make too much of it. How could such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford,

"It has been seen. There is quite a scare in the town about an escaped ape, as they imagine the creature to be.

"Well, it's a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you must allow that each incident in itself is

"Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your head full of this theory of yours. Some

gaunt, halffamished tramp steals after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears and

"And again, in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty, and then a few moments later with an

occupant, you know that it was lamplight, that the lamp was half turned down, and that you had no special

reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you may have overlooked the creature in the first

"And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted. It is certainly a formidable

indictment that you have against Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he would

"Yes; I feel that a public duty rests upon me, and, besides, I must do it for my own safety, unless I choose to

allow myself to be hunted by this beast out of the college, and that would be a little too feeble. I have quite

made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I use your paper and pens for an hour?"

Abercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour, and then for a second hour his pen

travelled swiftly over it. Page after page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back in his

armchair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At last, with an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith

sprang to his feet, gathered his papers up into order, and laid the last one upon Peterson's desk.

"Of my signature, and of the date. The date is the most important. Why, Peterson, my life might hang upon

"On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will promise to go to bed the moment you

"It is a statement of all that I have been telling you tonight. I wish you to witness it."

"Certainly," said Peterson, signing his name under that of his companion. "There you are! But what is the

"For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every event. There is only one course open to me,

"Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I hope that we won't need to bother you, but

it will ease my mind to know that you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take your

Abercrombie Smith was not an entirely pleasant man to have as an enemy. Slow and easytempered, he was

formidable when driven to action. He brought to every purpose in life the same deliberate resoluteness which

had distinguished him as a scientific student. He had laid his studies aside for a day, but he intended that the

day should not be wasted. Not a word did he say to his host as to his plans, but by nine o'clock he was well on

In the High Street he stopped at Clifford's, the gunmaker's, and bought a heavy revolver, with a box of

centralfire cartridges. Six of them he slipped into the chambers, and halfcocking the weapon, placed it in

the pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie's rooms, where the big oarsman was lounging over his

"One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the longest of them."

"No; that will do." Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the way to the quadrangle. "We are neither

of us chickens, Hastie," said he. "I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am going to

have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal with, I won't, of course, need you. If I shout,

however, up you come, and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?"

Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham's door and stepped in. Bellingham was seated behind his table,

writing. Beside him, among his litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale number

249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately

round him, closed the door, locked it, took the key from the inside, and then stepping across to the fireplace,

struck a match and set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage upon his bloated face.

Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table, drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid

it in his lap. Then he took the long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of

"Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can't touch you. But I have a law that will set matters straight. If in

five minutes you have not set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet through your

"But you must give reasons. You are a madmana dangerous madman. Why should I destroy my own

Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an inexorable face. As the secondhand stole

In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the mummy, ever glancing round to see the

eye and the weapon of his terrible visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every stab

of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and dried essences rained down upon the floor.

Suddenly, with a rending crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of sprawling limbs,

The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinderlike debris was piled upon it. The little room was like the

stokehole of a steamer and the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped and

worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick, fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a

heavy smell of burned rosin and singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and brittle

"Perhaps that will satisfy you," snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear in his little grey eyes as he glanced

"No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no more devil's tricks. In with all these

"And what now?" asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to the blaze.

"Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in that drawer, I think."

"No, no," shouted Bellingham. "Don't burn that! Why, man, you don't know what you do. It is unique; it

"But look here, Smith, you can't really mean it. I'll share the knowledge with you. I'll teach you all that is in

Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw

it into the fire, and pressed it down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith pushed

"Now, Master B.," said he, "I think I have pretty well drawn your teeth. You'll hear from me again, if you

return to your old tricks. And now goodmorning, for I must go back to my studies."

And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events which occurred in Old College,

Oxford, in the spring of '84. As Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last heard of

in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict his statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the

ways of nature are strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be found by those who

I used to be the leading practitioner of Los Amigos. Of course, everyone has heard of the great electrical

generating gear there. The town is wide spread, and there are dozens of little townlets and villages all round,

which receive their supply from the same centre, so that the works are on a very large scale. The Los Amigos

folk say that they are the largest upon earth, but then we claim that for everything in Los Amigos except the

Now, with so fine an electrical supply, it seemed to be a sinful waste of hemp that the Los Amigos criminals

should perish in the oldfashioned manner. And then came the news of the eleotrocutions in the East, and

how the results had not after all been so instantaneous as had been hoped. The Western Engineers raised their

eyebrows when they read of the puny shocks by which these men had perished, and they vowed in Los

Amigos that when an irreclaimable came their way he should be dealt handsomely by, and have the run of all

the big dynamos. There should be no reserve, said the engineers, but he should have all that they had got.

And what the result of that would be none could predict, save that it must be absolutely blasting and deadly.

Never before had a man been so charged with electricity as they would charge him. He was to be smitten by

the essence of ten thunderbolts. Some prophesied combustion, and some disintegration and disappearance.

They were waiting eagerly to settle the question by actual demonstration, and it was just at that moment that

Warner had been wanted by the law, and by nobody else, for many years. Desperado, murderer, train robber

and road agent, he was a man beyond the pale of human pity. He had deserved a dozen deaths, and the Los

Amigos folk grudged him so gaudy a one as that. He seemed to feel himself to be unworthy of it, for he made

two frenzied attempts at escape. He was a powerful, muscular man, with a lion head, tangled black locks, and

a sweeping beard which covered his broad chest. When he was tried, there was no finer head in all the

crowded court. It's no new thing to find the best face looking from the dock. But his good looks could not

balance his bad deeds. His advocate did all he knew, but the cards lay against him, and Duncan Warner was

I was there at the committee meeting when the matter was discussed. The town council had chosen four

experts to look after the arrangements. Three of them were admirable. There was Joseph M`Conner, the very

man who had designed the dynamos, and there was Joshua Westmacott, the chairman of the Los Amigos

Electrical Supply Company, Limited. Then there was myself as the chief medical man, and lastly an old

German of the name of Peter Stulpnagel. The Germans were a strong body at Los Amigos, and they all voted

for their man. That was how he got on the committee. It was said that he had been a wonderful electrician at

home, and he was eternally working with wires and insulators and Leyden jars; but, as he never seemed to get

any further, or to have any results worth publishing he came at last to be regarded as a harmless crank, who

had made science his hobby. We three practical men smiled when we heard that he had been elected as our

colleague, and at the meeting we fixed it all up very nicely among ourselves without much thought of the old

fellow who sat with his ears scooped forward in his hands, for he was a trifle hard of hearing, taking no more

part in the proceedings than the gentlemen of the press who scribbled their notes on the back benches.

We did not take long to settle it all. In New York a strength of some two thousand volts had been used, and

death had not been instantaneous. Evidently their shock had been too weak. Los Amigos should not fall into

that error. The charge should be six times greater, and therefore, of course, it would be six times more

effective. Nothing could possibly be more logical. The whole concentrated force of the great dynamos should

So we three settled it, and had already risen to break up the meeting, when our silent companion opened his

"Gentlemen," said he, "you appear to me to show an extraordinary ignorance upon the subject of electricity.

The committee was about to break into an angry reply to this brusque comment, but the chairman of the

Electrical Company tapped his forehead to claim its indulgence for the crankiness of the speaker.

"Pray tell us, sir," said he, with an ironical smile, "what is there in our conclusions with which you find

"With your assumption that a large dose of electricity will merely increase the effect of a small dose. Do you

not think it possible that it might have an entirely different result? Do you know anything, by actual

"We know it by analogy," said the chairman, pompously. "All drugs increase their effect when they increase

"Your argument is not very good," said he. "When I used to take whisky, I used to find that one glass would

excite me, but that six would send me to sleep, which is just the opposite. Now, suppose that electricity were

We three practical men burst out laughing. We had known that our colleague was queer, but we never had

"Pray consider," said Peter, "that workmen who have touched the wires, and who have received shocks of

only a few hundred volts, have died instantly. The fact is well known. And yet when a much greater force

was used upon a criminal at New York, the man struggled for some little time. Do you not clearly see that the

"I think, gentlemen, that this discussion has been carried on quite long enough," said the chairman, rising

again. "The point, I take it, has already been decided by the majority of the committee, and Duncan Warner

shall be electrocuted on Tuesday by the full strength of the Los Amigos dynamos. Is it not so?"

"Then the motion is carried, and your protest will be duly entered in the minutes," said the chairman, and so

The attendance at the electrocution was a very small one. We four members of the committee were, of course,

present with the executioner, who was to act under their orders. The others were the United States Marshal,

the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, and three members of the press. The room was a small brick chamber,

forming an outhouse to the Central Electrical station. It had been used as a laundry, and had an oven and

copper at one side, but no other furniture save a single chair for the condemned man. A metal plate for his

feet was placed in front of it, to which ran a thick, insulated wire. Above, another wire depended from the

ceiling, which could be connected with a small metallic rod projecting from a cap which was to be placed

upon his head. When this connection was established Duncan Warner's hour was come.

There was a solemn hush as we waited for the coming of the prisoner. The practical engineers looked a little

pale, and fidgeted nervously with the wires. Even the hardened Marshal was ill at ease, for a mere hanging

was one thing, and this blasting of flesh and blood a very different one. As to the pressmen, their faces were

whiter than the sheets which lay before them. The only man who appeared to feel none of the influence of

these preparations was the little German crank, who strolled from one to the other with a smile on his lips and

mischief in his eyes. More than once he even went so far as to burst into a shout of laughter, until the

"How can you so far forget yourself, Mr. Stulpnagel," said he, "as to jest in the presence of death?"

"If I were in the presence of death I should not jest," said he, "but since I am not I may do what I choose."

This flippant reply was about to draw another and a sterner reproof from the chaplain, when the door was

swung open and two warders entered leading Duncan Warner between them. He glanced round him with a set

It was barbarous to keep him in suspense. The chaplain murmured a few words in his ear, the attendant

placed the cap upon his head, and then, while we all held our breath, the wire and the metal were brought in

He had bounded in his chair as the frightful shock crashed through his system. But he was not dead. On the

contrary, his eyes gleamed far more brightly than they had done before. There was only one change, but it

was a singular one. The black had passed from his hair and beard as the shadow passes from a landscape.

They were both as white as snow. And yet there was no other sign of decay. His skin was smooth and plump

Again the connection was made, and again Duncan Warner sprang in his chair and shouted, but, indeed, were

it not that he still remained in the chair none of us would have recognised him. His hair and his beard had

shredded off in an instant, and the room looked like a barber's shop on a Saturday night. There he sat, his eyes

still shining, his skin radiant with the glow of perfect health, but with a scalp as bald as a Dutch cheese, and a

chin without so much as a trace of down. He began to revolve one of his arms, slowly and doubtfully at first,

"That jint," said he, "has puzzled half the doctors on the Pacific Slope. It's as good as new, and as limber as a

The situation was a painful one. The Marshal glared at the committee. Peter Stulpnagel grinned and rubbed

his hands. The engineers scratched their heads. The baldheaded prisoner revolved his arm and looked

"No, sir," said the Marshal "we've had foolery enough for one morning. We are here for an execution, and a

"There's a hook handy upon the ceiling. Fetch in a rope, and we'll soon set this matter straight."

There was another awkward delay while the warders departed for the cord. Peter Stulpnagel bent over

Duncan Warner, and whispered something in his ear. The desperado started in surprise.

Peter shook his head, and the two began to laugh as though they shared some huge joke between them.

The rope was brought, and the Marshal himself slipped the noose over the criminal's neck. Then the two

warders, the assistant and he swung their victim into the air. For half an hour he hunga dreadful

sightfrom the ceiling. Then in solemn silence they lowered him down, and one of the warders went out to

order the shell to be brought round. But as he touched ground again what was our amazement when Duncan

Warner put his hands up to his neck, loosened the noose, and took a long, deep breath.

"Paul Jefferson's sale is goin' well," he remarked, "I could see the crowd from up yonder," and he nodded at

"Up with him again!" shouted the Marshal, "we'll get the life out of him somehow."

They kept him there for an hour, but when he came down he was perfectly garrulous.

"Old man Plunket goes too much to the Arcady Saloon," said he. "Three times he's been there in an hour; and

It was monstrous and incredible, but there it was. There was no getting round it. The man was there talking

when he ought to have been dead. We all sat staring in amazement, but United States Marshal Carpenter was

not a man to be euchred so easily. He motioned the others to one side, so that the prisoner was left standing

"Duncan Warner," said he, slowly, "you are here to play your part, and I am here to play mine. Your game is

to live if you can, and my game is to carry out the sentence of the law. You've beat us on electricity. I'll give

you one there. And you've beat us on hanging, for you seem to thrive on it. But it's my turn to beat you now,

He pulled a sixshooter from his coat as he spoke, and fired all the shots through the body of the prisoner.

The room was so filled with smoke that we could see nothing, but when it cleared the prisoner was still

"Coats must be cheap where you come from," said he. "Thirty dollars it cost me, and look at it now. The six

holes in front are bad enough, but four of the balls have passed out, and a pretty state the back must be in."

The Marshal's revolver fell from his hand, and he dropped his arms to his sides, a beaten man.

"Maybe some of you gentlemen can tell me what this means," said he, looking helplessly at the committee.

"I AM the only person who knows anything. I should have warned these gentlemen; but, as they would not

listen to me, I have allowed them to learn by experience. What you have done with your electricity is that you

"Yes, it will take the wear of hundreds of years to exhaust the enormous nervous energy with which you have

drenched him. Electricity is life, and you have charged him with it to the utmost. Perhaps in fifty years you

"It seems to me that it does not much matter what you do with him now," said he.

"Maybe we could drain the electricity out of him again. Suppose we hang him up by the heels?"

"Well, well, he shall do no more mischief in Los Amigos, anyhow," said the Marshal, with decision. "He

"On the contrary," said Peter Stulpnagel, "I think that it is much more probable that he will wear out the

It was rather a fiasco and for years we didn't talk more about it than we could help, but it's no secret now and

Dr. James Ripley was always looked upon as an exceedingly lucky dog by all of the profession who knew

him. His father had preceded him in a practice in the village of Hoyland, in the north of Hampshire, and all

was ready for him on the very first day that the law allowed him to put his name at the foot of a prescription.

In a few years the old gentleman retired, and settled on the South Coast, leaving his son in undisputed

possession of the whole country side. Save for Dr. Horton, near Basingstoke, the young surgeon had a clear

run of six miles in every direction, and took his fifteen hundred pounds a year, though, as is usual in country

Dr. James Ripley was twoandthirty years of age, reserved, learned, unmarried, with set, rather stern

features, and a thinning of the dark hair upon the top of his head, which was worth quite a hundred a year to

him. He was particularly happy in his management of ladies. He had caught the tone of bland sternness and

decisive suavity which dominates without offending. Ladies, however, were not equally happy in their

management of him. Professionally, he was always at their service. Socially, he was a drop of quicksilver. In

vain the country mammas spread out their simple lures in front of him. Dances and picnics were not to his

taste, and he preferred during his scanty leisure to shut himself up in his study, and to bury himself in

Study was a passion with him, and he would have none of the rust which often gathers round a country

practitioner. It was his ambition to keep his knowledge as fresh and bright as at the moment when he had

stepped out of the examination hall. He prided himself on being able at a moment's notice to rattle off the

seven ramifications of some obscure artery, or to give the exact percentage of any physiological compound.

After a long day's work he would sit up half the night performing iridectomies and extractions upon the

sheep's eyes sent in by the village butcher, to the horror of his housekeeper, who had to remove the debris

next morning. His love for his work was the one fanaticism which found a place in his dry, precise nature.

It was the more to his credit that he should keep up to date in his knowledge, since he had no competition to

force him to exertion. In the seven years during which he had practised in Hoyland three rivals had pitted

themselves against him, two in the village itself and one in the neighbouring hamlet of Lower Hoyland. Of

these one had sickened and wasted, being, as it was said, himself the only patient whom he had treated during

his eighteen months of ruralising. A second had bought a fourth share of a Basingstoke practice, and had

departed honourably, while a third had vanished one September night, leaving a gutted house and an unpaid

drug bill behind him. Since then the district had become a monopoly, and no one had dared to measure

It was, then, with a feeling of some surprise and considerable curiosity that on driving through Lower

Hoyland one morning he perceived that the new house at the end of the village was occupied, and that a

virgin brass plate glistened upon the swinging gate which faced the high road. He pulled up his fifty guinea

chestnut mare and took a good look at it. "Verrinder Smith, M. D.," was printed across it in very neat, small

lettering. The last man had had letters half a foot long, with a lamp like a firestation. Dr. James Ripley noted

the difference, and deduced from it that the newcomer might possibly prove a more formidable opponent.

He was convinced of it that evening when he came to consult the current medical directory. By it he learned

that Dr. Verrinder Smith was the holder of superb degrees, that he had studied with distinction at Edinburgh,

Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and finally that he had been awarded a gold medal and the Lee Hopkins

scholarship for original research, in recognition of an exhaustive inquiry into the functions of the anterior

spinal nerve roots. Dr. Ripley passed his fingers through his thin hair in bewilderment as he read his rival's

record. What on earth could so brilliant a man mean by putting up his plate in a little Hampshire hamlet.

But Dr. Ripley furnished himself with an explanation to the riddle. No doubt Dr. Verrinder Smith had simply

come down there in order to pursue some scientific research in peace and quiet. The plate was up as an

address rather than as an invitation to patients. Of course, that must be the true explanation. In that case the

presence of this brilliant neighbour would be a splendid thing for his own studies. He had often longed for

some kindred mind, some steel on which he might strike his flint. Chance had brought it to him, and he

And this joy it was which led him to take a step which was quite at variance with his usual habits. It is the

custom for a newcomer among medical men to call first upon the older, and the etiquette upon the subject is

strict. Dr. Ripley was pedantically exact on such points, and yet he deliberately drove over next day and

called upon Dr. Verrinder Smith. Such a waiving of ceremony was, he felt, a gracious act upon his part, and a

fit prelude to the intimate relations which he hoped to establish with his neighbour.

The house was neat and well appointed, and Dr. Ripley was shown by a smart maid into a dapper little

consulting room. As he passed in he noticed two or three parasols and a lady's sun bonnet hanging in the hall.

It was a pity that his colleague should be a married man. It would put them upon a different footing, and

interfere with those long evenings of high scientific talk which he had pictured to himself. On the other hand,

there was much in the consulting room to please him. Elaborate instruments, seen more often in hospitals

than in the houses of private practitioners, were scattered about. A sphygmograph stood upon the table and a

gasometerlike engine, which was new to Dr. Ripley, in the corner. A bookcase full of ponderous volumes

in French and German, papercovered for the most part, and varying in tint from the shell to the yoke of a

duck's egg, caught his wandering eyes, and he was deeply absorbed in their titles when the door opened

suddenly behind him. Turning round, he found himself facing a little woman, whose plain, palish face was

remarkable only for a pair of shrewd, humorous eyes of a blue which had two shades too much green in it.

Dr. Ripley was so surprised that he dropped his hat and forgot to pick it up again.

He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He

could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse,

and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only too clearly.

"Ladies are in danger of losing their privileges when they usurp the place of the other sex. They cannot claim

Dr. Ripley felt irritated by the quiet manner in which the lady crossquestioned him.

"Well, Dr. Smith! But if you insist upon an answer, I must say that I do not think medicine a suitable

It was an exceedingly rude speech, and he was ashamed of it the instant after he had made it. The lady,

"It seems to me that you are begging the question," said she. "Of course, if it makes women masculine that

It was a neat little counter, and Dr. Ripley, like a pinked fencer, bowed his acknowledgment.

"I am sorry that we cannot come to some more friendly conclusion since we are to be neighbours," she

"It was a singular coincidence," she continued, "that at the instant that you called I was reading your paper on

"But the views which you attribute to Professor Pitres, of Bordeaux, have been repudiated by him."

"Here is his pamphlet of 1891." She picked it from among a litter of periodicals. "If you have time to glance

Dr. Ripley took it from her and shot rapidly through the paragraph which she indicated. There was no

denying that it completely knocked the bottom out of his own article. He threw it down, and with another

frigid bow he made for the door. As he took the reins from the groom he glanced round and saw that the lady

was standing at her window, and it seemed to him that she was laughing heartily.

All day the memory of this interview haunted him. He felt that he had come very badly out of it. She had

showed herself to be his superior on his own pet subject. She had been courteous while he had been rude,

selfpossessed when he had been angry. And then, above all, there was her presence, her monstrous intrusion

to rankle in his mind. A woman doctor had been an abstract thing before, repugnant but distant. Now she was

there in actual practice, with a brass plate up just like his own, competing for the same patients. Not that he

feared competition, but he objected to this lowering of his ideal of womanhood. She could not be more than

thirty, and had a bright, mobile face, too. He thought of her humorous eyes, and of her strong, wellturned

chin. It revolted him the more to recall the details of her education. A man, of course. could come through

such an ordeal with all his purity, but it was nothing short of shameless in a woman.

But it was not long before he learned that even her competition was a thing to be feared. The novelty of her

presence had brought a few curious invalids into her consulting rooms, and, once there, they had been so

impressed by the firmness of her manner and by the singular, newfashioned instruments with which she

tapped, and peered, and sounded, that it formed the core of their conversation for weeks afterwards. And soon

there were tangible proofs of her powers upon the country side. Farmer Eyton, whose callous ulcer had been

quietly spreading over his shin for years back under a gentle regime of zinc ointment, was painted round with

blistering fluid, and found, after three blasphemous nights, that his sore was stimulated into healing. Mrs.

Crowder, who had always regarded the birthmark upon her second daughter Eliza as a sign of the indignation

of the Creator at a third helping of raspberry tart which she had partaken of during a critical period, learned

that, with the help of two galvanic needles, the mischief was not irreparable. In a month Dr. Verrinder Smith

Occasionally, Dr. Ripley met her as he drove upon his rounds. She had started a high dogcart, taking the reins

herself, with a little tiger behind. When they met he invariably raised his hat with punctilious politeness, but

the grim severity of his face showed how formal was the courtesy. In fact, his dislike was rapidly deepening

into absolute detestation. "The unsexed woman," was the description of her which he permitted himself to

give to those of his patients who still remained staunch. But, indeed, they were a rapidlydecreasing body,

and every day his pride was galled by the news of some fresh defection. The lady had somehow impressed

the country folk with almost superstitious belief in her power, and from far and near they flocked to her

But what galled him most of all was, when she did something which he had pronounced to be impracticable.

For all his knowledge he lacked nerve as an operator, and usually sent his worst cases up to London. The

lady, however, had no weakness of the sort, and took everything that came in her way. It was agony to him to

hear that she was about to straighten little Alec Turner's club foot, and right at the fringe of the rumour came

a note from his mother, the rector's wife, asking him if he would be so good as to act as chloroformist. It

would be inhumanity to refuse, as there was no other who could take the place, but it was gall and wormwood

to his sensitive nature. Yet, in spite of his vexation, he could not but admire the dexterity with which the

thing was done. She handled the little waxlike foot so gently, and held the tiny tenotomy knife as an artist

holds his pencil. One straight insertion, one snick of a tendon, and it was all over without a stain upon the

white towel which lay beneath. He had never seen anything more masterly, and he had the honesty to say so,

though her skill increased his dislike of her. The operation spread her fame still further at his expense, and

selfpreservation was added to his other grounds for detesting her. And this very detestation it was which

One winter's night, just as he was rising from his lonely dinner, a groom came riding down from Squire

Faircastle's, the richest man in the district, to say that his daughter had scalded her hand, and that medical

help was needed on the instant. The coachman had ridden for the lady doctor, for it mattered nothing to the

Squire who came as long as it were speedily. Dr. Ripley rushed from his surgery with the determination that

she should not effect an entrance into this stronghold of his if hard driving on his part could prevent it. He did

not even wait to light his lamps, but sprang into his gig and flew off as fast as hoof could rattle. He lived

rather nearer to the Squire's than she did, and was convinced that he could get there well before her.

And so he would but for that whimsical element of chance, which will for ever muddle up the affairs of this

world and dumbfound the prophets. Whether it came from the want of his lights, or from his mind being full

of the thoughts of his rival, he allowed too little by half a foot in taking the sharp turn upon the Basingstoke

road. The empty trap and the frightened horse clattered away into the darkness, while the Squire's groom

crawled out of the ditch into which he had been shot. He struck a match, looked down at his groaning

companion, and then, after the fashion of rough, strong men when they see what they have not seen before, he

The doctor raised himself a little on his elbow in the glint of the match. He caught a glimpse of something

When he came to himself the groom was gone, for he had scudded off to the Squire's house for help, but a

small page was holding a giglamp in front of his injured leg, and a woman, with an open case of polished

instruments gleaming in the yellow light, was deftly slitting up his trouser with a crooked pair of scissors.

"It's all right, doctor," said she soothingly. "I am so sorry about it. You can have Dr. Horton tomorrow, but I

am sure you will allow me to help you tonight. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you by the

"When it comes we can move you into the gig. A little more light, John! So! Ah, dear, dear, we shall have

laceration unless we reduce this before we move you. Allow me to give you a whiff of chloroform, and I have

Dr. Ripley never heard the end of that sentence. He tried to raise a hand and to murmur something in protest,

but a sweet smell was in his nostrils, and a sense of rich peace and lethargy stole over his jangled nerves.

Down he sank, through clear, cool water, ever down and down into the green shadows beneath, gently,

without effort, while the pleasant chiming of a great belfry rose and fell in his ears. Then he rose again, up

and up, and ever up, with a terrible tightness about his temples, until at last he shot out of those green

shadows and was in the light once more. Two bright, shining, golden spots gleamed before his dazed eyes.

He blinked and blinked before he could give a name to them. They were only the two brass balls at the end

posts of his bed, and he was lying in his own little room, with a head like a cannon ball, and a leg like an iron

bar. Turning his eyes, he saw the calm face of Dr. Verrinder Smith looking down at him.

"Ah, at last!" said she. "I kept you under all the way home, for I knew how painful the jolting would be. It is

in good position now with a strong side splint. I have ordered a morphia draught for you. Shall I tell your

"I should prefer that you should continue the case," said Dr. Ripley feebly, and then, with a half hysterical

laugh,"You have all the rest of the parish as patients, you know, so you may as well make the thing

It was not a very gracious speech, but it was a look of pity and not of anger which shone in her eyes as she

Dr. Ripley had a brother, William, who was assistant surgeon at a London hospital, and who was down in

Hampshire within a few hours of his hearing of the accident. He raised his brows when he heard the details.

"Speak for yourself, James," said the London man with a sniff. "But apart from that, you know that the

"Well, I don't know. It struck me during the night that we may have been a little narrow in our views."

"Nonsense, James. It's all very fine for women to win prizes in the lecture room, but you know as well as I do

that they are no use in an emergency. Now I warrant that this woman was all nerves when she was setting

your leg. That reminds me that I had better just take a look at it and see that it is all right."

"I would rather that you did not undo it," said the patient. "I have her assurance that it is all right."

"Of course, if a woman's assurance is of more value than the opinion of the assistant surgeon of a London

"I should prefer that you did not touch it," said the patient firmly, and Dr. William went back to London that

The lady, who had heard of his coming, was much surprised on learning his departure.

"We had a difference upon a point of professional etiquette," said Dr. James, and it was all the explanation he

For two long months Dr. Ripley was brought in contact with his rival every day, and he learned many things

which he had not known before. She was a charming companion, as well as a most assiduous doctor. Her

short presence during the long, weary day was like a flower in a sand waste. What interested him was

precisely what interested her, and she could meet him at every point upon equal terms. And yet under all her

learning and her firmness ran a sweet, womanly nature, peeping out in her talk, shining in her greenish eyes,

showing itself in a thousand subtle ways which the dullest of men could read. And he, though a bit of a prig

and a pedant, was by no means dull, and had honesty enough to confess when he was in the wrong.

"I don't know how to apologise to you," he said in his shamefaced fashion one day, when he had progressed

so far as to be able to sit in an armchair with his leg upon another one; "I feel that I have been quite in the

"Over this woman question. I used to think that a woman must inevitably lose something of her charm if she

"Oh, you don't think they are necessarily unsexed, then?" she cried, with a mischievous smile.

"I feel so pleased that I should have helped in changing your views. I think that it is the most sincere

"At any rate, it is the truth," said he, and was happy all night at the remembrance of the flush of pleasure

For, indeed, he was already far past the stage when he would acknowledge her as the equal of any other

woman. Already he could not disguise from himself that she had become the one woman. Her dainty skill,

her gentle touch, her sweet presence, the community of their tastes, had all united to hopelessly upset his

previous opinions. It was a dark day for him now when his convalescence allowed her to miss a visit, and

darker still that other one which he saw approaching when all occasion for her visits would be at an end. It

came round at last, however, and he felt that his whole life's fortune would hang upon the issue of that final

interview. He was a direct man by nature, so he laid his hand upon hers as it felt for his pulse, and he asked

"Surely you do not attribute any such base motive to me!" he cried. "I love you as unselfishly as ever a

"No, I was wrong. It was a foolish speech," said she, moving her chair a little back, and tapping her

stethoscope upon her knee. "Forget that I ever said it. I am so sorry to cause you any disappointment, and I

appreciate most highly the honour which you do me, but what you ask is quite impossible."

With another woman he might have urged the point, but his instincts told him that it was quite useless with

this one. Her tone of voice was conclusive. He said nothing, but leaned back in his chair a stricken man.

"I am so sorry," she said again. "If I had known what was passing in your mind I should have told you earlier

that I intended to devote my life entirely to science. There are many women with a capacity for marriage, but

few with a taste for biology. I will remain true to my own line, then. I came down here while waiting for an

opening in the Paris Physiological Laboratory. I have just heard that there is a vacancy for me there, and so

you will be troubled no more by my intrusion upon your practice. I have done you an injustice just as you did

me one. I thought you narrow and pedantic, with no good quality. I have learned during your illness to

appreciate you better, and the recollection of our friendship will always be a very pleasant one to me."

And so it came about that in a very few weeks there was only one doctor in Hoyland. But folks noticed that

the one had aged many years in a few months, that a weary sadness lurked always in the depths of his blue

eyes, and that he was less concerned than ever with the eligible young ladies whom chance, or their careful

"Men die of the diseases which they have studied most," remarked the surgeon, snipping off the end of a

cigar with all his professional neatness and finish. "It's as if the morbid condition was an evil creature which,

when it found itself closely hunted, flew at the throat of its pursuer. If you worry the microbes too much they

may worry you. I've seen cases of it, and not necessarily in microbic diseases either. There was, of course, the

wellknown instance of Liston and the aneurism; and a dozen others that I could mention. You couldn't have

a clearer case than that of poor old Walker of St. Christopher's. Not heard of it? Well, of course, it was a little

before your time, but I wonder that it should have been forgotten. You youngsters are so busy in keeping up

"Walker was one of the best men in Europe on nervous disease. You must have read his little book on

sclerosis of the posterior columns. It's as interesting as a novel, and epochmaking in its way. He worked like

a horse, did Walkerhuge consulting practicehours a day in the clinical wardsconstant original

investigations. And then he enjoyed himself also. `De mortuis,' of course, but still it's an open secret among

all who knew him. If he died at fortyfive, he crammed eighty years into it. The marvel was that he could

have held on so long at the pace at which he was going. But he took it beautifully when it came.

"I was his clinical assistant at the time. Walker was lecturing on locomotor ataxia to a wardful of youngsters.

He was explaining that one of the early signs of the complaint was that the patient could not put his heels

together with his eyes shut without staggering. As he spoke, he suited the action to the word. I don't suppose

the boys noticed anything. I did, and so did he, though he finished his lecture without a sign.

"There was hardly a trace of them left. I tapped away at his kneetendon and might as well have tried to get a

jerk out of that sofacushion. He stood with his eyes shut again, and he swayed like a bush in the wind.

"Then I knew that he had had the lightning pains, and that the case was complete. There was nothing to say,

so I sat looking at him while he puffed and puffed at his cigarette. Here he was, a man in the prime of life,

one of the handsomest men in London, with money, fame, social success, everything at his feet, and now,

without a moment's warning, he was told that inevitable death lay before him, a death accompanied by more

refined and lingering tortures than if he were bound upon a Red Indian stake. He sat in the middle of the blue

cigarette cloud with his eyes cast down, and the slightest little tightening of his lips. Then he rose with a

motion of his arms, as one who throws off old thoughts and enters upon a new course.

"`Better put this thing straight at once,' said he. `I must make some fresh arrangements. May I use your paper

"He settled himself at my desk and he wrote half a dozen letters. It is not a breach of confidence to say that

they were not addressed to his professional brothers. Walker was a single man, which means that he was not

restricted to a single woman. When he had finished, he walked out of that little room of mine, leaving every

hope and ambition of his life behind him. And he might have had another year of ignorance and peace if it

"It took five years to kill him, and he stood it well. If he had ever been a little irregular he atoned for it in that

long martyrdom. He kept an admirable record of his own symptoms, and worked out the eye changes more

fully than has ever been done. When the ptosis got very bad he would hold his eyelid up with one hand while

he wrote. Then, when he could not coordinate his muscles to write, he dictated to his nurse. So died, in the

"Poor old Walker was very fond of experimental surgery, and he broke ground in several directions. Between

ourselves, there may have been some more groundbreaking afterwards, but he did his best for his cases. You

know M`Namara, don't you? He always wears his hair long. He lets it be understood that it comes from his

artistic strain, but it is really to conceal the loss of one of his ears. Walker cut the other one off, but you must

"It was like this. Walker had a fad about the portio durathe motor to the face, you knowand he thought

paralysis of it came from a disturbance of the blood supply. Something else which counterbalanced that

disturbance might, he thought, set it right again. We had a very obstinate case of Bell's paralysis in the wards,

and had tried it with every conceivable thing, blistering, tonics, nervestretching, galvanism, needles, but all

without result. Walker got it into his head that removal of the ear would increase the blood supply to the part,

"Well, we did it at night. Walker, of course, felt that it was something of an experiment, and did not wish too

much talk about it unless it proved successful. There were halfadozen of us there, M`Namara and I among

the rest. The room was a small one, and in the centre was in the narrow table, with a macintosh over the

pillow, and a blanket which extended almost to the floor on either side. Two candles, on a sidetable near the

pillow, supplied all the light. In came the patient, with one side of his face as smooth as a baby's, and the

other all in a quiver with fright. He lay down, and the chloroform towel was placed over his face, while

Walker threaded his needles in the candle light. The chloroformist stood at the head of the table, and

M`Namara was stationed at the side to control the patient. The rest of us stood by to assist.

"Well, the man was about half over when he fell into one of those convulsive flurries which come with the

semiunconscious stage. He kicked and plunged and struck out with both hands. Over with a crash went the

little table which held the candles, and in an instant we were left in total darkness. You can think what a rush

and a scurry there was, one to pick up the table, one to find the matches, and some to restrain the patient who

was still dashing himself about. He was held down by two dressers, the chloroform was pushed, and by the

time the candles were relit, his incoherent, halfsmothered shoutings had changed to a stertorous snore. His

head was turned on the pillow and the towel was still kept over his face while the operation was carried

through. Then the towel was withdrawn, and you can conceive our amazement when we looked upon the face

"How did it happen? Why, simply enough. As the candles went over, the chloroformist had stopped for an

instant and had tried to catch them. The patient, just as the light went out, had rolled off and under the table.

Poor M`Namara, clinging frantically to him, had been dragged across it, and the chloroformist, feeling him

there, had naturally claped the towel across his mouth and nose. The others had secured him, and the more he

roared and kicked the more they drenched him with chloroform. Walker was very nice about it, and made the

most handsome apologies. He offered to do a plastic on the spot, and make as good an ear as he could, but

M`Namara had had enough of it. As to the patient, we found him sleeping placidly under the table, with the

ends of the blanket screening him on both sides. Walker sent M`Namara round his ear next day in a jar of

methylated spirit, but Mac's wife was very angry about it, and it led to a good deal of illfeeling.

"Some people say that the more one has to do with human nature, and the closer one is brought in contact

with it, the less one thinks of it. I don't believe that those who know most would uphold that view. My own

experience is dead against it. I was brought up in the miserablemortalclay school of theology, and yet here

I am, after thirty years of intimate acquaintance with humanity, filled with respect for it. The, evil lies

commonly upon the surface. The deeper strata are good. A hundred times I have seen folk condemned to

death as suddenly as poor Walker was. Sometimes it was to blindness or to mutilations which are worse than

death. Men and women, they almost all took it beautifully, and some with such lovely unselfishness, and with

such complete absorption in the thought of how their fate would affect others, that the man about town, or the

frivolouslydressed woman has seemed to change into an angel before my eyes. I have seen deathbeds, too,

of all ages and of all creeds and want of creeds. I never saw any of them shrink, save only one poor,

imaginative young fellow, who had spent his blameless life in the strictest of sects. Of course, an exhausted

frame is incapable of fear, as anyone can vouch who is told, in the midst of his seasickness, that the ship is

going to the bottom. That is why I rate courage in the face of mutilation to be higher than courage when a

"Now, I'll take a case which I had in my own practice last Wednesday. A lady came in to consult methe

wife of a wellknown sporting baronet. The husband had come with her, but remained, at her request, in the

waitingroom. I need not go into details, but it proved to be a peculiarly malignant case of cancer. `I knew it,'

said she. `How long have I to live?' `I fear that it may exhaust your strength in a few months,' I answered.

`Poor old Jack!' said she. `I'll tell him that it is not dangerous.' `Why should you deceive him?' I asked. `Well,

he's very uneasy about it, and he is quaking now in the waitingroom. He has two old friends to dinner

tonight, and I haven't the heart to spoil his evening. Tomorrow will be time enough for him to learn the

truth.' Out she walked, the brave little woman, and a moment later her husband, with his big, red face shining

with joy came plunging into my room to shake me by the hand. No, I respected her wish and I did not

undeceive him. I dare bet that evening was one of the brightest, and the next morning the darkest, of his life.

"It's wonderful how bravely and cheerily a woman can face a crushing blow. It is different with men. A man

can stand it without complaining, but it knocks him dazed and silly all the same. But the woman does not lose

her wits any more than she does her courage. Now, I had a case only a few weeks ago which would show you

what I mean. A gentleman consulted me about his wife, a very beautiful woman. She had a small tubercular

nodule upon her upper arm, according to him. He was sure that it was of no importance, but he wanted to

know whether Devonshire or the Riviera would be the better for her. I examined her and found a frightful

sarcoma of the bone, hardly showing upon the surface, but involving the shoulderblade and clavicle as well

as the humerus. A more malignant case I have never seen. I sent her out of the room and I told him the truth.

What did he do? Why, he walked slowly round that room with his hands behind his back, looking with the

greatest interest at the pictures. I can see him now, putting up his gold pincenez and staring at them with

perfectly vacant eyes, which told me that he saw neither them nor the wall behind them. `Amputation of the

arm?' he asked at last. `And of the collarbone and shoulderblade,' said I. `Quite so. The collarbone and

shoulderblade,' he repeated, still staring about him with those lifeless eyes. It settled him. I don't believe

he'll ever be the same man again. But the woman took it as bravely and brightly as could be, and she has done

very well since. The mischief was so great that the arm snapped as we drew it from the nightdress. No, I

don't think that there will be any return, and I have every hope of her recovery.

"The first patient is a thing which one remembers all one's life. Mine was commonplace, and the details are of

no interest. I had a curious visitor, however, during the first few months after my plate went up. It was an

elderly woman, richly dressed, with a wickerwork picnic basket in her hand. This she opened with the tears

streaming down her face, and out there waddled the fattest, ugliest, and mangiest little pug dog that I have

ever seen. `I wish you to put him painlessly out of the world, doctor,' she cried. `Quick, quick, or my

resolution may give way.' She flung herself down, with hysterical sobs, upon the sofa. The less experienced a

doctor is, the higher are his notions of professional dignity, as I need not remind you, my young friend, so I

was about to refuse the commission with indignation, when I bethought me that, quite apart from medicine,

we were gentleman and lady, and that she had asked me to do something for her which was evidently of the

greatest possible importance in her eyes. I led off the poor little doggie, therefore, and with the help of a

saucerful of milk and a few drops of prussic acid his exit was as speedy and painless as could be desired. `Is it

over?' she cried as I entered. It was really tragic to see how all the love which should have gone to husband

and children had, in default of them, been centred upon this uncouth little animal. She left, quite broken

down, in her carriage, and it was only after her departure that I saw an envelope sealed with a large red seal,

and lying upon the blotting pad of my desk. Outside, in pencil, was written: `I have no doubt that you would

willingly have done this without a fee, but I insist upon your acceptance of the enclosed.' I opened it with

some vague notions of an eccentric millionaire and a fiftypound note, but all I found was a postal order for

four and sixpence. The whole incident struck me as so whimsical that I laughed until I was tired. You'll find

there's so much tragedy in a doctor's life, my boy, that he would not be able to stand it if it were not for the

"And a doctor has very much to be thankful for also. Don't you ever forget it. It is such a pleasure to do a

little good that a man should pay for the privilege instead of being paid for it. Still, of course, he has his home

to keep up and his wife and children to support. But his patients are his friendsor they should be so. He

goes from house to house, and his step and his voice are loved and welcomed in each. What could a man ask

for more than that? And besides, he is forced to be a good man. It is impossible for him to be anything else.

How can a man spend his whole life in seeing suffering bravely borne and yet remain a hard or a vicious

man? It is a noble, generous, kindly profession, and you youngsters have got to see that it remains so."