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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bag of Diamonds, by George Manville Fenn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Bag of Diamonds
+
+Author: George Manville Fenn
+
+Release Date: March 19, 2008 [EBook #24871]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BAG OF DIAMONDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+The Bag of Diamonds, by George Manville Fenn.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+This is a short book, and indeed later editions added some short stories
+to bring the book up to a respectable size.  The story is also unusual
+for this author, for much of the action takes place on the lower floors
+of a doctor's house in nineteenth century London.
+
+The edition used was one of the worst-printed books your reviewer has
+ever seen, yet with diligence the story has been extracted from it and
+is here presented.  The doctor had for some years been obsessed with an
+idea that he could make an elixir of eternal life, and at some point in
+the recent past he had started to neglect his patients, so that he had
+very few new patients, so there was not much money in the house, and
+times were hard.  The most amusing character in the book is Bob, the
+"boots" boy, and it is he who at almost the last chapter rediscovers the
+Bag of Diamonds, that had somehow got lost in almost the first.
+
+There are villains, heroes, heroines--and Bob with his antics--in this
+book, and you will enjoy it.  For the whole middle part of the book the
+people in it are blundering about, none of them ever quite sure what was
+going on.  You, as the reader, may well have a better idea than they do,
+but be prepared to be wrong in your surmises.  Makes a good audiobook.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+THE BAG OF DIAMONDS, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+IN A FOG.
+
+"Ugh! what a night!  And I used to grumble about Hogley Marsh!  Why,
+it's like living in a drain!"
+
+Ramillies Street, W.C., was certainly not attractive at twelve o'clock
+on that December night, for it had been snowing in the early part of the
+evening; that snow was suffering from a fall of blacks: and as evil
+communications corrupt good manners, the evil communication of the
+London soot was corrupting the good manners of the heavenly snow, which
+had become smirched by the town's embrace, and was sorrowfully weeping
+itself away in tears beneath a sky--
+
+No, there was not any sky.  For four days there had not been a breath of
+air to dissipate the heavy mist, and into this mist the smoke of a
+million chimneys had rolled, mingled, and settled down in the streets in
+one horrible yellowish-black mirk.
+
+There were gas lamps in Ramillies Street--here and there distinguishing
+themselves by a faint glow overhead; but John Whyley, policeman on the
+beat, was hardly aware of their existence till he laid his hand upon
+each post.
+
+"Now, only that Burglar Bill and Company aren't such fools as to come
+out on such a night as this, here's their chance.  Why, they might
+burgle every house on one side of the street while the whole division
+was on the other.  Blest if I know hardly where I am!"
+
+J.W. stopped and listened, but it seemed as if utter silence as well as
+utter darkness had descended upon the great city.  But few people were
+about, and where a vehicle passed along a neighbouring street the patter
+of hoofs and roll of wheels was hushed by the thick snow.
+
+"It is a puzzler," muttered the man.  "Blind man's buff's nothing to it,
+and no pretty gals to catch.  Now, whereabouts am I?  I should say I'm
+just close to the corner by the square, and--well, now, look at that!"
+
+He uttered a low chuckle, and stared up from the curbstone at a dull,
+red glare that seemed like the eye of some fierce monster swimming in
+the sea of fog, and watching the man upon his beat.
+
+"And if I didn't think I was t'other side of the street!  Ah, how you do
+'member me of old times," he continued, apostrophising the red glare;
+"seems like being back at Hogley, and looking off the station platform
+to see if you was burning all right after I'd been and lit you up.  Red
+signals for trains--red signals for them as wants help," he muttered as,
+with his hands within his belt, he stepped slowly up under an arch of
+iron scroll-work rusting away, a piece of well-forged ornamentation,
+which had once borne an oil lamp, and at whose sides were iron
+extinguishers, into which, in the bygone days when Ramillies was a
+fashionable street, footmen had thrust their smoking links.  But fashion
+had gone afar, and Ichabod was written metaphorically upon the door of
+that old Queen Anne house, while really there was a tarnished brass
+plate bearing the inscription "Dr Chartley," with blistered panels
+above and below.  Arched over the doorstep was an architect's idea of a
+gigantic shell, supported by two stout boys, whom a lively imagination
+might have thought to be suffering from the doctor's prescriptions, as
+they glared wildly at the red bull's-eye in the centre of the fanlight
+above the door.
+
+"Nothing like a red signal to show you where you are," said John Whyley,
+stepping slowly back on to the pavement, to the very edge of the
+curbstone, and then keeping to it as his guide for a few yards, till he
+had passed a second door, also displaying the red light, and beneath it,
+in letters nearly rubbed away, though certainly not from cleaning, the
+word "Surgery."
+
+"That's where that young nipper of a buttons lives, him as took a sight
+at me when I ketched him standing on his head a-top of the dustbin down
+the area.  Hullo!"
+
+John Whyley stood perfectly still and invisible in the fog, as the
+surgery door was opened; there was a low scuffling noise, and a hurried
+whispering.
+
+"Get your arm well under him.  Hold hard?  Shut the door.  Mind he don't
+slip down.  It's dark as pitch.  Now then, come on."
+
+At that moment a bright light shone upon the scene in front of Dr
+Chartley's surgery door, for John Whyley gave a turn to the top of the
+bull's-eye lantern looped on to his belt, and threw up the figures of
+three men, two of whom were supporting on either side another, whose
+head hung forward and sidewise, whose legs were bent, and his body in a
+limp, helpless state, which called forth all the strength of the others
+to keep him from subsiding in a heap upon the snow.  He seemed to be
+young, heavily bearded, and, as far as his costume could be seen in the
+yellow glare, he wore high boots and a pea-jacket; while his companions,
+one of whom was a keen-faced man, with clean-shaved face and a dark
+moustache, the other rather French-looking from his shortly cropped
+beard, wore ulsters and close travelling-caps.
+
+As the light flashed upon the group, one of the men drew his breath
+sharply between his teeth, and for a space no one stirred.
+
+"Acciden', gentlemen?" said John Whyley, giving a sniff as if he smelt a
+warm sixpence, but it was only caused by the soot-charged fog.
+
+The constable's speech seemed to break the spell, and one of the men
+spoke out thickly:
+
+"Axe'den', constable?  Yes, it's all right.  Hold him up, Smith.  Wants
+to lie down, constable.  Thinks snow is clean sheets."
+
+"Oh, that's it, is it, sir?" said John Whyley, examining each face in
+turn a little suspiciously.  "Thought as it was a patient--"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the moustache, speaking in a high-pitched
+voice, "doctor keeps some good stuff.  Not all physic, policeman.  Here,
+hold up."  This last to the man he was supporting, and upon whose head
+he now placed a soft felt hat, which he had held in his hand.
+
+"Gent seems rather on, sir," said John Whyley, going up more closely.
+
+"Ah!" said the first speaker, "you smelt his breath."
+
+"'Nough to knock you down, sir," said the constable.  "He'll want to
+come and see the doctor again to-morrow morning."
+
+There was a very strong odour of spirits, and in the gloom it did not
+occur to the constable that the two men who seemed most intoxicated were
+very bright-eyed, and yet ghastly pale.  He merely drew back for the
+group to pass.
+
+"Got to take him far, sir?"
+
+"Far?  No, constable.  Let him lie down and go to sleep.  Dishgusting
+thing man can't come to see friend without getting drunk.  Look at me--
+and Shmith."
+
+"Yes, sir; you're all right enough," said the constable.  "Shall I lend
+you a hand?"
+
+"No," said the man with the moustache, "we're all right; get us a cab."
+
+"Where, sir?" said the constable, with a grin; "don't believe such a
+thing's to be got, sir, a night like this.  All gone home."
+
+At that moment from out of the fog there was a sudden jolt and the whish
+of a whip.
+
+"Hullo?" shouted the policeman.
+
+"Hullo!" came back in a husky voice, as if spoken through layers of
+flannel, "what street's this?"
+
+"Ramillies.  Here's a fare."
+
+There was a muttering, then a bump, jolt, and jangle of a cab heard, and
+a huge figure slowly seemed to loom up out of the fog in a spectral way,
+leading a gigantic horse, beyond which was something dark.
+
+"What's the row?" said the husky voice.
+
+"These gents want a cab."
+
+"Oh, but I can't drive nowheres to-night.  I drove right into one pub,
+and then nearly down two areas.  Where do you want to go."
+
+"John's Hotel, Surrey Street, old man.  Look sharp.  Five bob."
+
+"Five what, sir?  Why, I wouldn't stir a step under ten.  I'm just going
+to get my old horse into the first mews, shove on his nosebag and then
+get inside and go to sleep.  I can't drive.  I shall have to lead him."
+
+"Give him ten," said the man with the sharp voice.
+
+"All right.  Here, hold up, old man," said the other.  "Look sharp!  See
+never I come out with him again."
+
+"Yes, don't make a noise, or you'll bring out the doctor," said the
+other man, and the policeman went to the cab door.
+
+The cab evidently objected to the fare, for the door stuck, and only
+yielded at last with a rattle, and so suddenly that John Whyley nearly
+went on his back.  But he recovered himself, and held his light so that
+the utterly helpless man, who seemed as if composed of jelly, was pulled
+by one of his companions, thrust by the other, into the cab, and forced
+up on the back seat.  "There y'are, const'ble," said the man with the
+thick voice, "there's something to get glass; but don't take too much--
+like that chap--my deares' frien', it's s'prising ain't it?  Tell cabman
+John's Hotel."
+
+"All right, sir, he knows.  Go ahead, cabby."
+
+He took a few slow steps towards where the cabman stood by the horse's
+head.
+
+"Think they're all right?" said the cabman, in a husky whisper.
+
+"Give me half-a-crown," said John Whyley.
+
+"Did they?  Wish I'd stood out for a sovereign."
+
+As he spoke he started his horse slowly, and the cab went by the
+constable, whose lamp showed the interior very indistinctly, the cab
+window being drawn up, and then the sight and sound of the vehicle died
+out in the fog, and all was once more still.
+
+"Ill wind as blows no one any good!" said the constable, slowly
+continuing his beat.  "Rather have my half-crown than their sick
+headaches in the morning.  Rather rum that no one came out with all that
+talking."
+
+John Whyley hummed a tune and tried two or three front-doors and area
+gates, and then he took off his helmet and scratched his head as if
+puzzled.
+
+"Now, have I done right?" he said suddenly.  "Seemed to be square.
+Smelt of drink horrid.  Other two 'peared to be on all but once or
+twice.  I say!  Was it acting?"
+
+He gave his helmet a sharp blow with his doubled fist, stuck it on
+tightly, and took a few quick steps in the direction in which the cab
+had moved off.
+
+"Tchah!" he ejaculated, stopping short; "that's the worst o' my trade;
+makes a man suspicious of everything and everybody.  Why, I nearly
+accused the missus of picking my pockets of that sixpence I forgot I
+spent with a mate.  It's all right.  They were as tight as tight.  Ugh!
+What a night."
+
+John Whyley's beat took him in another direction, but something--a
+feeling of dissatisfaction with his late act, or the suspicion
+engendered by his calling made him turn back and go slowly to the
+doctor's door.
+
+All was perfectly still; the red lamp burned over the principal door,
+while over the surgery door the three last letters were more indistinct
+than ever, and "Surg" somehow looked like a portion of "Resurgam" on a
+memorial stone.
+
+John Whyley went close up to the latter door, and listened.  All was
+still.
+
+He hesitated a few moments, and then tapped and listened again, when
+there seemed to be a slight rustling sound within, but he could not be
+sure.
+
+Turning on his light, there, beside him, was a bell-pull with the hole
+half-filled with snow.
+
+"Shall I?" he said, hesitating.  "People don't like being called up for
+a cock-and-bull story, and what have I got to say?  These gents came
+away tight."
+
+He paused and removed his helmet for another refreshing scratch.
+
+"Was it acting?  I've heerd a chap on the stage drawl just like that one
+with the thick voice.  Now, stop a moment.  Let's argufy.  Couldn't be
+burglary.  Yes, it could--body burglary!"
+
+John Whyley grew excited as a strange train of thought ran through his
+head in connection with what he had heard tell about surgeons and their
+investigations, and purchases delivered in the dead of night.
+
+"I don't care," he said; "wrong or right, I wish I hadn't let that cab
+go, and I'll get to the bottom of it before I've done."
+
+It might have been connected with visions of another possible
+half-crown, or it might have been in an honest desire to do his duty as
+a guardian of the public safety.  At any rate, John Whyley gave a
+vigorous tug at Dr Chartley's night-bell and waited.
+
+"No answer; that's a suspicious fact," he said to himself; and he rang
+again, listened, waited, and rang again.
+
+Hardly had the wire ceased to grate, when a curious whispering voice,
+close to his ear, said "What is it?" so strangely that John, who had
+only been a year in London, bounded back into the snow, and half drew
+his truncheon.
+
+"What is it?  Who's there?" came then.
+
+"What a fool I am!  Speaking trumpet!" muttered the man, and directing
+his light toward the doorpost he saw a raised patch of snow, which upon
+being removed displayed a hole.
+
+To this, full of confidence now, John Whyley applied his lips.
+
+"Police!" he said.  "Anything wrong?"  There was a pause, and then the
+same strange voice came again.
+
+"Wait.  I'll come down."
+
+Waiting was cold work, and John Whyley took at trot up, and was
+returning when he saw a dim light shine through the long glazed slits at
+the sides of the principal door, and directly after he heard a click a
+if a candlestick were set down on a marble slab, and one of the narrow
+windows showed a human shape in a misty way.
+
+The bull's-eye was turned on, and, after the momentary glimpse of a
+face, the rattling of a chain was heard and the front-door was opened a
+few inches to reveal a pale, haggard, but very handsome face, with large
+lustrous eyes, which looked dilated and strange.
+
+"I did not understand you, policeman.  Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Well, Miss, that's for you to say;" and he related what he had seen.
+
+"It is very strange.  My father's door is locked, and there is no
+light."
+
+"Yes, Miss--one over the door."
+
+"Yes, but that only shines into the surgery.  My brother has not come
+back."
+
+"But the doctor had company, Miss: that gentleman who had taken too
+much."
+
+"Oh, no; impossible."
+
+"Then I _have_ been done!" cried the man, striking his left hand a blow
+with his fist, as if to clinch the thought which had been troubling him.
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Well, Miss, I'm afraid there's something wrong.  But the doctor?"
+
+"He is not in his room."
+
+"But how about the speaking trumpet?"
+
+"I heard the night-bell.  He is not in his chamber, and the passage door
+is locked.  Perhaps--" a few moments' pause; then in a firm decided
+tone, "Yes, you had better come in."
+
+The door was closed, so that the chain could be unfastened; and as the
+door was being reopened, John Whyley pulled himself together, and
+cleared his throat.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, Miss," he said, as he stood in the large blank hall,
+and rubbed his shoes upon a very old mat.  "I don't like scaring you but
+its better to make sure than to let anything go wrong.  That's partly,
+you see, Miss, what we're for."
+
+"Yes, yes, but come at once to the surgery."
+
+"One minute, Miss," said the constable, examining carefully the handsome
+frightened face, and noting that its owner was tall, graceful, rather
+dark, and about three or four and twenty, while though her hair was in
+disorder as if from lying down, the lady was fully dressed.
+
+"What do you want?" she said, with the wild look in her eyes
+intensifying.
+
+"To do everything in order, Miss.  First, who lives here?"
+
+"My father, Dr Chartley."
+
+"Who else on the premises?"
+
+"The servant-girl.  Our boy.  My brother, a medical student, lives here,
+but he has not yet returned.  He is at a friend's house--a little
+party."
+
+"And you've had a party here, Miss?"
+
+"Oh, no; we never have company."
+
+"That'll do, Miss.  Now for the surgery.  One moment: your name,
+please?"
+
+"Richmond Chartley."
+
+"That'll do.  Rum name," he muttered; and following the lady, who led
+the way with a chamber candlestick in past the open door of a
+gloomy-looking dining-room, constable John Whyley found himself at the
+end of a passage to the left, in front of a half-glass door, whose panes
+were covered on the other side by a thick dark blind.
+
+"My father's surgery," said the lady in answer to an inquiring look.
+
+The constable nodded, and tried the door twice before kneeling down and
+holding his light to the key hole.
+
+"Key in," he said gruffly, "locked inside.  Who's likely to be here?"
+
+"My father.  He always sits in the consulting-room beyond at night--
+studying."
+
+Another short nod, and the constable rapped loudly.  No response.
+
+He rapped again, with the same result.  Then he drew a long breath, and
+the man showed that he possessed feeling as well as decision.
+
+"I don't want to alarm you, Miss, but I ought to force open this door."
+
+"But you do alarm me, man.  Yes, you are right.  No! let me come."
+
+She rapped smartly on the door.
+
+"Father!  Father!  Are you here?"
+
+Still no reply; and she drew back, looking wildly in the constable's
+eyes, while her hands seemed as if drawn together to clasp each other
+and cheek the nervous trembling and be of mutual support.
+
+"Yes," she said, "force it open.  Stop! break one of the panes."
+
+The constable leaned his shoulder against the pane nearest the lock, and
+there was a sharp crackling noise, the splintered glass being caught by
+the blind inside; but as the man thrust his hand through the great hole
+he had made, to draw the blind on one side, a fragment or two fell,
+making a musical tinkling.
+
+The man's next act was to take his lantern from his belt, and pass it
+through, directing the light in all directions, as he peered through the
+glass above, and then he withdrew the light with a low "Ha!"
+
+"What can you see?"
+
+"Hold hard, please, Miss, and keep back.  This isn't ladies' work.  I
+want some help here."
+
+"Then something has happened?"
+
+"Well, Miss, seeing what I did see to-night, it may be nothing worse
+than a drop too much, but it looks ugly."
+
+"Who is it?  My father?"
+
+"Can't say, Miss.  Elderly gent with bald head."
+
+"Oh, what you say is possible!  Quick! burst open the door!"
+
+The constable placed his shoulder to the door, but drew back with an
+angry gesture.
+
+"Of course!" he muttered, and thrusting his arm through, he reached the
+lock, turned the key, and the door swung open with a dismal creak.
+
+"Now, Miss, I'll see first, and come back and tell you."
+
+"Man! do you think I am a child?" was the sharp reply; and rushing by
+him, the speaker passed into the room, and went down upon her knees
+directly beside a figure in a shabby old dressing-gown, lying face
+downward on the floor.
+
+"Is he--"
+
+"Quick! turn on that gas."
+
+The constable took a step to obey, and kicked against something which
+rattled as it flew forward, and struck the wainscot board, while the
+next moment a dim, blue spark of light in a ground-glass burst into a
+flame, and lit up a dingy-looking, old-fashioned surgery just as the
+kneeling girl uttered a piteous cry.
+
+"That's enough," muttered the constable, stooping and picking up the
+object he had kicked against--a short whalebone-handled life-preserver,
+and slipping it into his pocket.  "Tells tales.  Now, Miss," he
+continued aloud, bending over the prostrate figure.  "Hah! yes!  I
+thought as much."
+
+It was plain enough.  A slight thread of blood was trickling slowly from
+a spot on the smooth glistening bald head of the prostrate man, while
+as, with a moan of anguish, the girl thrust her arm softly beneath his
+neck, and raised the head, the mark of another blow was visible above
+the temple.
+
+"Now, Miss, I can't leave you like this.  Let me stay while you go for
+help.  We must have some one here."
+
+These words seemed to rouse the girl into fierce action, and she gently
+supported the wounded head, her hand sought the injured man's wrist, and
+seized it in a professional way.
+
+"Man," she cried with angry energy, "while we are seeking help he may--
+Yes; still beating.  Quick!  Open that door.  No, no; that's the way
+into the street!  The other door--the consulting-room.  Prop it open
+with a chair.  We must get him on to the sofa, and do something at
+once."
+
+"Yes, Miss; but a doctor."
+
+"I am a doctor's daughter, man, and know what to do.  Quick!"
+
+"Well, of all--" muttered the constable, as he proceeded to the door in
+question; and then, without finishing the sentence, "Well, she is a
+plucked one!"
+
+He stepped into a shabbily furnished room, in whose grate a fire was
+just aglow; and as the door swung to, and he cast the light round to
+seek for a chair, he caught sight of a vacant couch, a table with
+bottle, glasses, and sugar thereon, and the cover drawn all on one side,
+so that the glasses were within an ace of being off; and then, drawing
+in his breath, he stepped to the other side of the table, and held down
+the light, which fell upon a drawn and ghastly face, while, hidden by
+the table-cover, there lay the figure of a well-dressed man.
+
+"Fit," muttered the constable, bending lower.  "No; I ain't a doctor,
+but I know what that means."
+
+He stepped back quickly, and shut the door after him.
+
+"No, no! prop it open."
+
+"Let it be, Miss," he replied sternly.  "There's something else wrong
+there."
+
+The girl stared up at him aghast.
+
+"Here's a sofy will do," he continued, pointing to a kind of settee,
+cushioned, and with a common moreen valance hanging down, while a rough
+kind of pillow was fastened to one end.  "You get up, Miss, and lift a
+bit.  I won't hurt him more than I can help.  That's it.  Sorry, Miss, I
+thought what I did."
+
+A low moan escaped the sufferer as he was lifted with difficulty upon
+the rough settee, and this being done, the constable renewed his
+request.
+
+"Now, Miss, it's a thing as wants doing at once.  Call help."
+
+"Hold up his head," was the quick imperious reply; and as the man
+obeyed, he saw to his surprise the girl go quickly to the row of shelves
+at one side of the room, take down a labelled bottle, remove the
+stopper, and pour some of its contents into a graduated glass.  To this
+she added a portion of the contents of another bottle, taking them down,
+replacing stoppers, and proceeding in the most matter-of-fact,
+businesslike way, as if accustomed to the task, and returning to try and
+trickle a little fluid between the patient's lip, supplementing it by
+bathing his temples.
+
+This done, she ran to a drawer, to return with a roll and scissors; then
+getting sponge, water, and basin, and proceeding deftly to bathe and
+strap up the bleeding wound, before turning to her assistant, who looked
+dim, as the fog seemed to have filtered into the room.  "Now," she said
+sharply, "is there some one injured in that room?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; but stop.  I will have help now," said the constable
+hoarsely.  "You shan't go in there!"
+
+At that moment, as the man stepped before the consulting-room door,
+there was the quick rattle of a latch-key heard faintly from the
+front-door, and as the opening door affected that of the surgery, and
+made it swing slightly and creak, the girl ran to it.
+
+"Here, Hendon! quick!"
+
+There was a heavy step in the passage, and a young man, who looked
+flushed, hurried into the surgery, hat in hand, his ulster over his arm.
+
+"What's the matter?" he said thickly.  The constable directed at him a
+sharp glance.
+
+"I don't know.  Look!  My father attacked, and--Oh?  Hendon, pray, pray
+see!"
+
+The young man had evidently been drinking; and the suddenness of this
+encounter seemed for a moment to confuse him; but as he caught sight of
+the injured doctor, the policeman peering at him with a sternly
+inquiring look, and the tall, handsome girl, with wild eyes and parted
+lips, pointing towards the consulting-room door, he threw back his head,
+gave it a shake as if to clear it, and spoke more clearly.
+
+"Accident?" he said.  "Look?"
+
+"Yes, for pity's sake, look."
+
+He strode to the consulting-room door, stepped in and was turning to
+come back, but the policeman was following.
+
+"What is it?" he said.  "Here! a light."
+
+He snatched the lantern from the constable's hand, and the light fell
+directly upon the face of the prostrate figure beyond the table.
+
+"Who's this?" he said, going down on one knee.  "Why, constable, what's
+up?  This man is dead!"
+
+"Yes, sir, I see that."
+
+"Yes, quite dead.  But what does it mean?  Has my sister--"
+
+"Seen him?  No, sir, I wouldn't let her come.  Now, then, as you're
+here, I'll go for a doctor and some of our men."
+
+"One minute.  I'm a medical student--bit thick, constable--been at a
+party--but I know what I'm doing.  Yes, this man's dead--shot, I think.
+But my father?  Here, come back.  That poor girl must be half wild."
+
+He ran back into the surgery.
+
+"Here, Rich, my girl, this is a terrible business.  Yes, yes," he added,
+slowly examining what his sister had done, and then drawing in his
+breath, as he passed his hand over the smooth bald head.  "How did it
+happen?"
+
+"I--I don't know," gasped the girl, wildly; and now that the burden was
+partly shifted from her shoulders, her feminine nature began to reassert
+itself, and she uttered a low wail.
+
+"But--here, constable, how did this come about?"
+
+The man explained in a few words, all the time gazing searchingly at the
+inquirer, but shaking his head to himself, as if feeling that the
+suspicions he harboured were wrong.
+
+"And now, sir, I must have some one in," said the man in conclusion.
+
+"Yes; of course, of course.  But my father?  We cannot leave him like
+that.  To take him up to his bedroom would not be wise, and we cannot--
+here, Rich, I say, where are you?  Constable, help me carry out this
+sofa."
+
+John Whyley followed, and the comfortable couch was carried from its
+neighbourhood by the ghastly figure lying beyond the table, into the
+surgery, placed close to the wall, and the wounded man carefully placed
+upon it in an easier position.
+
+"Now, sir, just one look round," said the constable, as Richmond knelt
+down, weeping silently by her father's side, "and then I'm off.  Got
+this, sir."
+
+He drew out the life-preserver, and showed it to the young student
+before going into the consulting-room, and after a glance round,
+kneeling by the dead man to make a rapid search of his pockets.
+
+"Surely this is not necessary now?"
+
+"Yes, sir, it is.  One of the first questions my sergeant will ask me
+will be about recognitions.  That will do, sir.  Not a scrap of anything
+about him after a sooperficial search.  Now the other place."
+
+He returned to the surgery, looked round, peered into a closet, and then
+examined the door.
+
+"No signs of violence," he said; and then the settee caught his
+attention, and he advanced cautiously, drew up the valance, but only to
+reveal that it was a great chest, and had not harbour beneath for
+concealment of person or article connected with the case.  "Chest, eh?"
+he said; and placing his hand to the cushion, he found that it was
+fastened to the great lid, which he raised with one hand, and directed
+the light into it with the other; but before it was open many inches he
+banged it down and started away as if horrified.
+
+"Bah, man! scared by a few bones.  Articulations, and preparations used
+in surgical lectures."
+
+"Yes, I see," said the man, recovering himself, "but coming upon 'em
+sudden like, they looked rather horrid.  Now, sir, I'm off.  I shall
+send on the first of our men I see, and come back with the doctor.  One
+two streets off, ain't there? if I can find him in the fog."
+
+"Yes; Mr Clayton Bell.  Be quick."
+
+The man hurried off, and in a remarkably short time, or so it seemed to
+the brother and sister, who were conversing in whispers as they strove
+to restore the unconscious man to consciousness, there was a ring at the
+bell, and the constable had returned with a grave, portly-looking
+surgeon and a sergeant of police.
+
+"Yes," said the newcomer, after a careful examination, "two heavy blows,
+given, I should say, the first from behind, the second as Dr Chartley
+was turning round.  As you surmised, Mr Chartley, the skull is
+fractured, and there is a severe pressure upon the brain.  And the other
+case?"
+
+The surgeon was led into the next room, where a long and careful
+examination was made.
+
+"No, Mr Chartley, no firearms here; the man has been poisoned."
+
+"Poisoned!" cried Hendon Chartley, turning to the table, and taking up
+one of the glasses to raise it to his nose, and then touch the liquid in
+the bottom with the tip of his finger and taste it.  "Brandy," he said,
+"only pure brandy."
+
+He set it down, and took up the second glass, which he smelt.
+
+"Ha! there's something here," he cried; and dipping his finger again, he
+tasted it, and spat quickly two or three times, before passing the glass
+to the surgeon, who contented himself with raising it to his nostrils.
+
+"Yes; Mr Chartley; no doubt about that," he said.  "How did all this
+come about?"
+
+He turned to the young student, who looked at the sergeant, and the
+sergeant at John Whyley, while the latter stared stolidly at the
+surgeon.
+
+"That's what we're going to see, sir," said Whyley.
+
+"Quite right, my man, quite right.  Now, Mr Chartley, I can do no more
+here.  I should like to have in a colleague in consultation over your
+father's case.  Nothing more can be done now.  We will be here quite
+early."
+
+He gave a few directions as he passed through the consulting-room, and
+then son and daughter were left to their painful vigil, and the thick
+fog covered all as with a funeral pall.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+GOING BACKWARDS.
+
+Breakfast-time in the dull dining-room, with its sombre old furniture,
+carpet dotted with holes worn by the legs of chairs, and the
+drab-painted panelled walls, made cheerful by a set of engravings in
+tarnished gilt, fly-pecked frames of the princes of the blood royal:
+H.R.H. the Prince Regent, with his brothers the Dukes of York, Clarence,
+Kent, Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge, each with a little square
+tasselled pillow at the top of the frame, and, reposing thereon, a very
+shabby coronet; while the two windows, with their faded curtains, looked
+across a row of rusty spikes at a prospect composed of a gaunt old
+house, evidently let in lodgings.
+
+Richmond Chartley, looking as charming as a handsome girl will look, in
+spite of a line of care upon her her head and a twitch of anxiety upon
+the corners of her lips, was distributing coffee, and alternating the
+task by cutting bread-and-butter--thin-thick for her brother Hendon, who
+was reading a sporting paper, and thin-thin for Dr Chartley, who was
+gazing in an abstracted manner at a paper before him, and making notes
+from time to time with a gilt pencil-case.
+
+He was a bland-looking, handsome man, with stiff white cravat, and that
+suave, softly-smiling aspect peculiar to fashionable physicians; but the
+fashion had gone, though the smile remained, to be shed upon his two
+children instead of upon the patients who came no more.
+
+The breakfast progressed, with Hendon eagerly taking in the detail of
+the last Australian boat-race, and the doctor making a calculation for
+the variation of the compound that was the dream of his life, till, as
+it was finally ended, he bent forward, and said softly, "Truly thankful,
+amen!"
+
+Hendon Chartley rustled his paper, and doubled it up, and thrust it into
+his pocket.
+
+"But no fried bacon," he said bitterly.  Dr Chartley turned his beams
+upon his son, and shook his head slowly.
+
+"Indigestible, Hendon.  But never mind.  Work as I do.  Get to the top
+of the tree, and then you can keep your carriage, and destroy your liver
+with Strasburg pie."
+
+"Bah!" said Hendon; but his father's countenance did not change.
+
+"Going to the hospital, my boy?"
+
+"Yes, the old dismal round.  But to allay suffering.  A great
+profession."
+
+"Wish it had less profession and more solid satisfaction!" said the
+young man.  "Good-bye, Rich."
+
+He hurried out of the room, and the next minute the door was heard to
+bang.
+
+"An ornament to the profession some day, Richmond."
+
+"Yes, dear, but--"
+
+"Well, my love?" said the doctor, beaming upon her softly.
+
+"Don't think me unkind, dear, now you are so deep in your study; but I
+do really want a little help."
+
+"Certainly, my darling, certainly.  Now, that's what I like; frank
+confidence on your part.  You are the best of housekeepers, my child;
+but I don't want you to take all the burden on your shoulders."
+
+Richmond Hartley sighed, and the line on her broad handsome forehead;
+took to itself so many puckers, which, however, did not detract from her
+beauty.
+
+"Well, my dear; speak out.  You want something?"
+
+"Yes, father; money."
+
+"Ah!" said Dr Chartley softly, as he tapped the table with the top of
+his worn pencil-case.  "Money; you want money."
+
+"Yes, father.  I am horribly pressed.  Poor Hendon has really not enough
+to pay for his lunch, and--"
+
+"Yes, my dear; but Hendon will soon be in a position to provide
+comfortably for himself," said the doctor blandly.
+
+The old proverb about the growing grass and the starving steed occurred
+to Richmond, but he only sighed.
+
+"I don't think you need trouble yourself about Hendon, my dear."
+
+"But there is the rent, father," said Richmond desperately, as the full
+extent of their position flashed upon her; and she felt impelled to
+speak.
+
+"Ah, yes; the rent.  I had forgotten the rent," said the doctor
+dreamily.
+
+"Final and threatening notices have been left about the rates and
+taxes."
+
+"Yes," said the doctor musingly.  "The idea is Utopian, but I have often
+thought how pleasant life would be were there no rents or rates and
+taxes."
+
+"Dear father, I must tell you all my troubles now I have begun," said
+Richmond, leaving her chair to kneel down before the handsome elderly
+man, and lay her hand upon his breast.
+
+"Certainly, my darling, certainly," he said, bending down to kiss her
+brow in the most gentlemanly manner, and then caress her luxuriant hair.
+
+"They have threatened to cut off both the gas and water."
+
+"Tut! tut! how unreasonable, Richmond!  Really a severe letter ought to
+be addressed to the companies' directors."
+
+"And, father dear, the tradespeople are growing not only impatient, but
+absolutely insulting.  What am I to do?"
+
+"Wait, my darling, wait.  Little clouds in our existence while we are
+attending the breaking forth of the sun.  Not long, my dear.  I am
+progressing rapidly with my discovery, and while I shall be extent with
+the fame, you shall be my dear banker, and manage everything as you do
+now."
+
+"Yes, yes, dear, I will; but it is so sad.  No patient seems to come to
+you now."
+
+"No, my dear, no," he replied calmly; "I'm afraid I neglected several,
+and they talked about it among themselves.  These things will spread."
+
+"Are there any means left of--pray forgive me, dear--of raising a little
+money?"
+
+"No, my dear, I think not.  But don't trouble about it.  Any day now I
+may have my discovery complete, and then--but really, my dear, this is
+wasting time.  I must get on with my work."
+
+He rose, and Richmond sighed as with courtly grace he raised her hand
+and kissed it, smiling it her sadly and shaking his head.
+
+"So like your dear mother," he said; "even to the tones of your voice.
+Don't let me be disturbed, Richmond.  I am getting to a critical point."
+
+He slowly crossed the room, gazing dreamily before him, and passed out,
+while his child stood listening to his step along the passage at the
+back of the side-board till the door of the surgery was heard to close,
+when, clasping her hands, she gazed up at the Prince Regent, as if he
+were some kind of a fat idol, and exclaimed passionately, "What shall I
+do?  What shall I do?"
+
+A violent twitch made her raise her hand to her face, which was
+contracted with pain, and she drew her breath hard; but the pang seemed
+to pass away, and after ringing the bell she began busily to pack the
+breakfast-things together.
+
+Before she had half done, the door opened softly, and a rather dirty
+face was thrust in.  It was the face of an old-looking boy with
+snub-nose, large mouth, and a rough, shock head bristling over his
+prominent forehead, and all redeemed by as bright and roguish-looking a
+pair of eyes as ever shone out from beneath a low type of head.
+
+The door was only opened wide enough at first to admit the head, but as
+soon as its owner had given a glance round, the door opened farther, and
+the rest of a rather small person appeared, dressed in a well-worn
+page's button suit, partly hidden by a dirty green-baize bibbed apron.
+
+The boy's sleeves were tucked up, and he was carrying a pair of
+old-fashioned Wellington boots by the tops, and these boots he held up
+on high.
+
+"Didn't know, Miss, whether the doctor had gone.  Been a-cleaning his
+boots.  Look, Miss, there's a shine!"
+
+"Yes, yes, Bob, they look very nice.  Take them, up-stairs, and then
+come and clear away."
+
+"All right, Miss.  I made a whole bottle o' blacking outer half a cake
+as a chap I knows give me."
+
+"Yes, yes, Bob."
+
+"Stunning blacking it is, too.  He's in the Brigade, and I minded his
+box for him, and took sixpence while he went and had a game of marbles.
+That's why he give me the cake."
+
+"Now, Bob, my good lad, I don't want to know anything about that.  Take
+those boots up-stairs."
+
+"All right, Miss; but do look how they shines.  I polished tops and all.
+Look, Miss."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes; they are beautifully clean."
+
+"I allus thinks about legs, Miss, when I cleans boots; and when I thinks
+about legs, I think about the doctor making such a good job o' mine
+arter I was run over.  It's stronger than the other; I am glad as it was
+broke."
+
+"Glad?"
+
+"Yes, Miss.  Why, if I hadn't been run over, my leg wouldn't have been
+broke, and then the doctor wouldn't have mended it, and I shouldn't be
+here.  What's she gone away for?" said the boy to himself, as he stared
+after Richmond.  "She's been a-crying; one of her eyes was wet.  What
+cowards gals are to cry!"
+
+The boy went to the door and listened, but all was perfectly still; so
+he set down the boots, rolled his apron into what he called a cow's
+tail, the process consisting in twisting it up very tightly and tucking
+it round his waist.
+
+This done he listened again, and finding all still, he thrust his arms
+into the doctor's boots and indulged in a hearty laugh of a silently
+weird description before going down on all fours, and walking as slowly
+and solemnly round the table as a tom cat, whose movements he accurately
+copied, rubbing himself up against the legs of the table, and purring
+loudly.
+
+This over, he rose to his feet and listened, but all being still, he
+went down upon all fours again and trotted round the table, leaped on to
+a chair, leaped down again, and ran out of the room and along the dark
+passage towards the head of the kitchen stairs, looking in the gloom
+wonderfully like some large ape.
+
+Active as he was, a descent of the dark stone stairs on all fours was
+beyond him; so he rose up, and reaching over, glided silently down the
+balustrade, to the great detriment of his buttons.  But, arrived upon
+the mat at the bottom, he once more resumed his quadrupedal attitude,
+thrust his hands well into the Wellington boots, and trotted with a soft
+patter into a dark back kitchen, out of which came a droning noise
+uttered by some one at work, and apparently under the impression that it
+was a song.
+
+The boy, more animal-like than ever, disappeared in the gloom, with the
+boots making a low _pat-pat, pat-pat_, and then there was a loud shriek,
+and Bob bounded out, skimmed up the stairs, after evidently having
+alarmed some one, and disappeared with the boots, which he sedately
+carried up to the bedroom.  Then he descended, to listen at the head of
+the stairs to a complaining voice relating to Richmond Chartley an
+account of how an "ormuz" great dog had come down the area, run into the
+back kitchen, and frighted some one almost out of her wits!
+
+Bob's face expressed happiness approaching the sublime, and he hurriedly
+cleared the breakfast-things, and took them down in time to be sent down
+by a not over-clean-looking maid-of-all-work to shut that there gate.
+
+The boy was in the act of performing this duty when a neatly-dressed
+girlish-looking body approached, carrying a large folio under one arm--a
+folio so bound that the neatly-mended and well-fitting little glove
+which covered a very small hand could hardly reach to the bottom.
+
+"Is your mistress in?"
+
+"Yes, Miss," said Bob, whose face seemed to reflect the sweet, sunny
+smile which greeted him.  "I'll slip round and let you in."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+This was the utterance of the new arrival, as she saw the boy apparently
+hurl himself over the iron balustrade of the area-steps, and plunge into
+the dust-hole region beyond.  But Bob had long practiced the keeping of
+his equilibrium, as the polished slat of the iron rail proved, and,
+instead of dashing out his brains on the stones, he reached the bottom
+with a bound, and diving into the house, reappeared in a marvellously
+short space of time at the front-door.
+
+"She's in the dining-room, Miss," said Bob, making a rush at the folio,
+and feasting his eyes the while on the natty fur-trimmed jacket and
+little furry hat, whose hue harmonised admirably with the wavy dark
+brown hair, neatly braided up beneath; for the visitor was remarkably
+well-dressed, and her fresh young face set off everything so well that
+no one thought of noticing that the dress had been turned, and that the
+jacket's rough exterior had certainly last winter been upon the other
+side.
+
+Bob hurriedly closed the door, and ran into the chilly dining-room with
+the folio, which he banged down on the table with--
+
+"Here's Miss Heath, Miss;" and then darted out of the room, leaving the
+two girls face to face.  "They don't like me to see 'em cuddling," he
+said with a grin; and, urged by the enormous amount of vitality that was
+in him, Bob bounded to the kitchen stairs to slide down, and, directly
+after, a gritty rubbing noise, made metrical to accompany the shrill
+whistling of a tune, arose, the result of the fact that Bob Hartnup, the
+doctor's boy, who clung to the house with the fidelity of a cat, was
+cleaning the knives.  Bob's facts were correct, if unrefined in
+expression, for the two girls flew to each other's arms, and as they
+kissed affectionately, each displayed tears in her eyes, while without
+relinquishing hands, they sat down together near the window.
+
+"No news, Janet?" whispered Richmond.  Her visitor shook her head
+slowly, gazing wistfully the while into her companion's eyes.
+
+"We must wait, Rich dear.  Africa is a horribly great place, and some
+day we shall hear that he is coming back."
+
+Richmond Chartley made no reply, but sat gazing straight out through the
+uncleaned window, as if her large clear eyes were looking straight away
+over the ocean in search of the man she loved.
+
+"Don't, don't, darling; don't look like that," whispered the younger
+girl.  "Don't think all that again.  It's cruel, it's wicked of them to
+have said such things.  He was too young, and strong, and brave to die."
+
+"Please God, yes!" said Richmond simply, but with a deep heart-stirring
+pathos in the tones of her rich voice.
+
+"And one of these days he'll come, dear, like the good prince in the
+fairy tale, all rich and handsome, as my darling brother always was, and
+marry my own dear Rich, and make her happy again."
+
+"Please God, yes!" said Richmond once more; and this time there was
+resignation, and despair so plainly marked that her companion flung her
+arms about her neck and began to sob.
+
+"Rich, dear Rich, don't, pray don't, or you'll drive me half mad.  I've
+all my lessons to give to-day.  And my hand will tremble, and I shall be
+so unnerved that I can do nothing."
+
+"Janet dear, I try so hard not to despair, but the weary months roll by,
+and it is two years now since you have had a line."
+
+"Yes, but what of that?  Perhaps he is where there are no post-offices,
+or perhaps he is not getting on; and, poor boy, he is too proud to write
+till he is doing better.  Why, he has only been away four years."
+
+"Four years!" said Richmond sadly; "is it only four years?"
+
+"That's all, dear, though it has seemed like eight, and we will not
+despair, even though it is so hard to bear.  Why, Rich, I feel sometimes
+when I kneel down at night that if he were dead I should know it; he
+would not let us go on suffering if it were so."
+
+"Janet dear, I feel sometimes as if it was wrong to have loved him."
+
+"What, dear Mark?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wrong?  For shame!  How could any girl who knew my darling old Mark as
+you did help loving him?"
+
+"But it made him dissatisfied.  I was the cause of his going away."
+
+"That foolish thought again!  You were not, dear.  It would have been
+the same if he had loved any girl.  He said that he would not ask any
+woman to be his wife while he was tied down here without any prospects;
+and he went off to make his fortune, as many another brave young
+Englishman has gone before."
+
+"But I made him discontented, dear."
+
+"You made him behave nobly.  Why, what other man would have said as he
+did, `I hold you to no engagement.  I ask nothing of you: I only tell
+you that I love you with all my heart'?"
+
+"`And some day I will return,'" said Richmond, in a low deep voice.
+
+"Yes, and some day he will return, dear: I do believe it, I _will_
+believe it, and--Oh, Rich, Rich, Rich, why, why are we such unhappy
+girls?"
+
+It was the elder's turn now to try and comfort the younger, who had
+burst into a passionate fit of weeping, so full of anguish that, at
+last, Richmond raised her friend's hand, kissed it, and holding the
+bonny little head between her hands, she said, with almost motherly
+tenderness.
+
+"Janet, Hendon has been speaking to you again?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"I knew it," said Richmond half angrily.  "It was thoughtless and cruel
+of him!"
+
+"No, no, don't blame him, dear.  No one could be more noble and more
+good.  You know how hard he works."
+
+"Yes," said Richmond, with a sigh.
+
+"And if he is impatient with his home and your father, why, you must
+recollect that he is a man, and men are not meant to be patient and
+suffering, like women."
+
+"He is too thoughtless, Janet, and--I don't like to say it of my own
+brother--too selfish."
+
+"No, no!" cried Janet, flushing.
+
+"Yes, dear, yes.  Could he have had his way, you two would have been man
+and wife, and he half living on the earnings of these poor tiny little
+hands."
+
+"I don't think he would have pressed me to it, Rich; and after all, it
+was because he loved me so."
+
+"Yes, and would have taken advantage of your loneliness here in this
+great cruel city, and dragged you down to poverty and misery such as I
+am bearing now.  Janet, Janet dear, I feel sometimes as if I cannot bear
+this miserable degradation longer, and that all these troubles must be a
+punishment for my not telling my father about Mark."
+
+"Why, Rich," said Janet, turning comforter once more, "what was there to
+tell?  You made no engagement.  And look here, if so much trouble is to
+come of love, why, you and I will take vows, and be single all our days.
+There, now, you look more like yourself; and I'm going to tell you my
+news."
+
+"News?" cried Richmond, starting eagerly, and then looking sadly at her
+friend.
+
+"Yes, two more pupils.  I'm getting along famously now.  And it does
+make me so happy and resigned.  There, I must go, but--"
+
+"You have something more to say to me?"
+
+"Yes, only--there, I will be firm.  Don't be angry with me, Rich dear,
+for I seem to have no one to care for here but you, and some day you
+shall pay me again, and I want you to borrow this."
+
+She slipped a tiny little purse into Richmond's hands, and then turned
+scarlet, as she saw her companion's pallid face.
+
+"No, no, Janet, I could not: your little scraped together earnings.
+Pray don't speak to me like that again."
+
+"I must.  I will!" cried the girl with passionate earnestness.  "I don't
+want it, dear, and it is only a loan.  Do, do, pray take it."
+
+"I could not," said Richmond, thrusting the purse into her friend's
+hand.
+
+"For Mark's sake, dear."
+
+"For Mark's sake!" faltered Richmond hoarsely.
+
+"Yes; how could I look him in the face again, if I had not behaved to
+you as he bade me when we said good-bye on board the ship?"
+
+"As he bade you?"
+
+"Yes; to be as a sister to you always, and to look to you as a sister
+for help and comfort when I was in need.  Yes, dear, for Mark's sake."
+
+For answer, Richmond Chartley took her friend once more in her arms, and
+kissed her, but only to press the purse back into her hand before going
+with her to the door, from which they both shrank on opening it, for a
+loud voice exclaimed, "Thank you!  How do?  Ah!  Miss Chartley, is the
+doctor within?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+THE DOCTOR AT HOME.
+
+"Yes, my father is at home, Mr Poynter," said Richmond, speaking
+calmly, and drawing back for the visitor to enter.
+
+Then to Janet, in a whisper.
+
+"Can you stay with me a few minutes?"
+
+"I daren't, dear; I am late now, and--Yes, I understand.  I will."
+
+It was Richmond's turn to display her firmness, and mastering a nervous
+trepidation which she felt, she bent down, kissed her friend, and, with
+a meaning pressure of the hand, said "good-bye," and ushered the fresh
+visitor, who was busily turning a crimson silk handkerchief round a
+painfully glossy hat, into the dining-room.
+
+"Thankye," he said, sitting down, but jumping up again, and placing
+another chair, "beg pardon, won't you sit down?  I'm in no hurry if the
+doctor's engaged."
+
+He nervously seized a very thick gold chain, and dragged a great gold
+watch from his pocket to consult.
+
+"Eleven," he said; "thought I'd come and see him as I went into the
+City.  Nothing the matter, much, but it's as well to see your medical
+man."
+
+"I'll tell my father you are here, Mr Poynter."
+
+"No, don't hurry.  I'm very busy at my place, but plenty of time.  How's
+Hendon?"
+
+"My brother is quite well."
+
+"Is he, now?  That's right.  Fine thing, good health, ain't it?"
+
+"Of course," said Richmond quietly.
+
+"Yes, of course; so it is, Miss Chartley.  Hendon always seems to be a
+fine strong fellow.  I always liked him since I met him at a fellow's
+rooms.  Not at home now?"
+
+"Oh, no; he has gone on to the hospital."
+
+"Ah, yes.  Feel sometimes as if I should go to the hospital."
+
+The visitor appeared to be a florid, strongly-built man, in the most
+robust health, save that probably a love of too many of the good things
+of this life had made its mark upon him.
+
+"I will tell my father you are here," said Richmond again; and this time
+she escaped from the room, to come suddenly upon Bob outside, striking
+an attitude indictive of a determination to crush the glossy hat left
+upon the table in the hall; and so sudden was Richmond's appearance that
+the boy stood fast, as if struck with catalepsy, for a few seconds
+before he bethought himself of a way out of his difficulty, when,
+pretending to catch a fly which did not exist, he turned upon his heel,
+and beat an ignominious retreat to the lower regions.
+
+Dr Chartley's patient was no sooner left alone than he started up, and
+began smoothing his short, carefully-parted hair, took off a second
+glove to display half a dozen jewelled rings, and wetting fingers and
+thumbs, he twirled the begummed points of his moustache, and fell into a
+state of agitation about the cut of his ultra-fashionably made clothes.
+
+He looked round in vain, for there was no looking-glass; still, he had
+some satisfaction, for he was able to see that his tightly-fitting
+patent-leather boots were spotless, and that the drab gaiters with pearl
+buttons were exactly in their places; though the largely-checked
+trousers he wore did give him trouble as to the exact direction the
+outer seams should take, whilst his sealskin vest would look spotty in
+certain lights.
+
+He was in the act of re-smoothing his hair when Richmond returned, and,
+hard City man as he was, he could not avoid an increase of depth in his
+colour as he saw that the handsome woman before him was watching him
+intently.
+
+"My father will come to you directly, Mr Poynter," she said quietly.
+
+"Oh, all right; but don't let me drive you away, Miss Chartley.  I don't
+see much society, and chat's pleasant sometimes, ain't it?"
+
+"Of course," said Richmond quietly; "but I thought my brother said you
+were fond of society."
+
+"Fond of it? yes, of course," said Poynter hastily; and he smoothed his
+double fringe over his forehead again, where the hairdresser had cut it
+into a pattern which he had assured him was in the height of fashion,
+but only with the result of making him look like butcher turned
+betting-man.  "Yes, fond of it," he said again, "and of course I can get
+plenty with fellows, but--er--ladies' society is what I like."
+
+James Poynter directed at Richmond a smiling leer, one which had proved
+very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved
+the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two;
+but it was utterly lost here, for its intended recipient was looking
+another way, and as it faded from its inventor's face there was a blank,
+inane expression left, bordering upon the grotesque.
+
+"You should go more into ladies' society, then, Mr Poynter, as soon as
+your health permits," said Richmond, with provoking coolness.
+
+"Oh, I'm not ill," he said hastily; and his forehead grew damp as he
+floundered about, looking fishy now about the eyes and mouth, which
+opened and shut at intervals, as if to give passage to words which never
+came.  "Felt I was--er--little out of sorts, you know, and thought I'd
+see the doctor.  Let's see, I said so before, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes, I think you did, Mr Poynter.  Here is my father."
+
+There was a slight cough just then, the door opened, and the doctor
+entered, his bland, aristocratic presence contrasting broadly with that
+of his patient.
+
+"Ah, Poynter," he said, "good-morning.  Don't go, my dear; Mr Poynter
+will come into my consulting-room, I daresay."
+
+"Yes, of course," cried the patient, shaking hands, and forgetting to
+leave off.  "I shall--shall you?--good-morning, Miss Chartley."
+
+He released the doctor's hand, to turn and shake Richmond's which he
+pressed desperately, and then followed the bland, calm, stately doctor
+out of the room, when he caught up his hat savagely and ground his teeth
+in the dark passage.
+
+"I feel just like a fool when I'm with her!" he said to himself.  "I
+never feel so anywhere else.  And I ain't a fool.  I should just like to
+see the man who would say I was."
+
+The doctor led the way through the glazed door into the dim surgery,
+with its rows of bottles, and stoppered glass jars containing unpleasant
+looking specimens preserved in spirits, all carefully labelled and
+inscribed in the doctor's own neat hand, but grown yellow with time; and
+as he closed the door after his patient, the latter's nostrils distended
+slightly, and an air of disgust chased the inane look as he breathed the
+unpleasant medicinal druggy air.
+
+"I was just busy over my discovery," continued the doctor blandly, "and
+I thought as a friend you would not mind coming here--it is the
+consulting-room, my dear Poynter; and I could go on, and we could chat
+over your ailment the while."
+
+"Oh, it's all the same to me," said Poynter; and, once out of Richmond's
+presence, he seemed another being.  Instead of carrying his glossy hat
+in his hand, he had resumed it, and wore it with a vulgar cock; he
+walked with the swagger of the low-class City man; and his face shone as
+he whisked out a second crimson silk handkerchief redolent of perfume,
+and blew his nose with a loud blast, which sounded defiant.
+
+"Here we are," said the doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a
+long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by
+the roots.  "Take that chair, my dear Poynter," he continued, pointing
+to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and
+closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the
+room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing
+thereon his new head-covering.
+
+There was a litter on the table, a chemist's set of weights and scales,
+divers papers, a spatula, pestle and mortar of glass, toy-like in size,
+and a book with memoranda, and pen and ink.
+
+"Very busy, you see, Poynter; I've nearly completed my task, and in a
+few months, perhaps weeks, the medical world will be startled by my
+discovery."
+
+"What are you going to do with it when you've done?"
+
+"Do with it?"
+
+"Yes.  Now, if I was you, I should say to a friend, `Lend me a thou.,'
+and then take a little shop, put it up in bottles, with three-halfpenny
+stamps, and advertise it well as the new patent medicine."
+
+"My dear Mr Poynter!"
+
+"Hold hard, doctor, I haven't done," he cried, speaking in a hard,
+browbeating manner, as if he were giving orders.  "Give it a spanking
+name, `Heal-all,' or `Cure all;' won't do to say Kill-all eh?  Haw, haw,
+haw!"
+
+He burst into a coarse, loud laugh, and the doctor sank back in his
+chair, with his brows twitching slightly.
+
+"Hold hard, I have it.  Nothing like a good name for the fools who
+swallow everything.  Get something out of one of your Greek and Latin
+physic-books--one of those words like hippocaustus or allegorus, or
+something they can't understand."
+
+"I do not quite see the force of your argument, my dear Mr Poynter,"
+said the doctor blandly.
+
+"Not see?  Why, man, it would be patent medicine then, and no one could
+take it from you.  Look at Hannodyne--good stuff, too, when you've got a
+headache in the morning--Government stamp, to imitate which is forgery!"
+
+"But still, I--"
+
+"Don't see?  Nonsense!  Make a fortune.  You want it.  Patients pretty
+scarce, eh?"
+
+He laughed again offensively, and the doctor winced, but kept up his
+bland smooth smile.
+
+"And suppose I took your advice, my dear Poynter, where is the friend to
+lend me a thousand pounds?"
+
+"Ah! where's the friend!" said Poynter, with a meaning look.  "P'r'aps I
+know the friend, if things went as he wanted."
+
+The doctor's face changed slightly, but his visitor was too obtuse to
+see it.
+
+"And would you suggest that I should--er--preside in the little shop and
+sell the allegorus?"
+
+"Ah, that ain't a bad name, is it?" said Poynter, giving his head a
+shake in the stiff collar in which it rested as an egg does in a cup.
+"No, not you; not businesslike enough.  Make Hendon do that."
+
+"Ah," said the doctor slowly, as he took up the bottle, removed the
+stopper, and smelled the contents before moistening one finger and
+tasting it.
+
+"You'll end by poisoning yourself with that stuff, doctor," said
+Poynter, chuckling.
+
+"No," he said blandly, "no, my dear James Poynter, no; it is a
+life-giver, not a destroyer.  Now, if you were to take, say, twenty
+drops in water--"
+
+"With sugar?" said Poynter, grinning.
+
+"Yes, with sugar, if you liked.  There's no objection to flavouring the
+vehicle--water."
+
+"Vehicle--water?  Why, I never heard of water being called a vehicle!
+Thought vehicle meant a carriage or trap."
+
+"In this case the water would be the vehicle, Poynter, and, as I was
+saying, if you were to take twenty drops of this extract, or rather,
+compound, you would feel as if a new lease of life were beginning--that
+everything looked brighter; that nerve and muscle were being strung up;
+your power of thought greater, and--try a little, my dear sir."
+
+"No, thankye, doctor; but if you've got a drop of brandy in the place
+and a bottle of soda, you may make it more than twenty drops of that."
+
+"I have some brandy," said the doctor, rising, "but no soda-water.  I
+can mix you a little soda and tartaric acid, though, in a glass of
+water, and it will have all the effect."
+
+James Poynter showed his great white teeth in a broad grin, threw
+himself back in the patients' chair, and unhooking his watch-chain,
+began to swing round the big seal, pencil-case, and sovereign-purse
+which hung at the end.
+
+"No, thankye, doctor," he said.  "Let's have the brandy-and-water, and
+sugar purissima, as you folks call it now, and you can mix me up a tonic
+and send it on."
+
+"Certainly, my dear Poynter, certainly," said the doctor, going to a
+closet, and taking out a spirit decanter, tumbler, and sugar, which he
+placed upon the stained green-baize table-cover, smilingly looking on
+afterwards with a little bright copper kettle in his hand as his visitor
+poured out liberally into his glass.
+
+"All right, eh, doctor?" said the young man, looking up in the bland,
+smooth face, with a good many wrinkles about his right eye.
+
+"I--er--do not understand you."
+
+"Brandy all right?  No pilly-coshy or anything of that sort in it?  Fill
+right up."
+
+"No," said the doctor, smiling.  "It's the best brandy, and I'll take a
+little with you."
+
+He filled up his guest's glass, and then smilingly took a second tumbler
+from the cupboard, and mixed himself a draught.
+
+"Yes, not bad brandy, doctor, but wants age," said Poynter, rinsing his
+mouth with the hot spirit and water, as if he had been cleaning his
+teeth.  "Now, I have a few dozen of a fine old cognac in my cellar that
+would give this fifty in a hundred, and lick it hollow."
+
+Perhaps to be expressive, Mr James Poynter shuffled his shoulders
+against the cushion of the chair and licked his lips, ending with a
+fish-like smack.
+
+"Let me send you a dozen, doctor."
+
+"No, no, my dear sir.  I did not know you were in the wine and spirit
+trade."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!"
+
+"And I could not afford--"
+
+"Yah!  Who asked you to?  I meant as a present.  Wine and spirit trade,
+indeed!  Hang it!  Do I look like a publican?"
+
+Dr Chartley told an abominable lie, for if ever man, from the crown of
+his pomatumed head, down over his prominent nubbey forehead, small eyes,
+prominent cheekbones, unpleasant nose, and heavy jaw, to the toes of his
+boots, looked like a fast, race-attending licenced victualler, it was
+James Poynter.
+
+Dr Chartley said, in answer to the indignant question, "No."
+
+"Humph!" ejaculated the visitor, mollifying himself with a large draught
+of brandy-and-water.  "I should think not, indeed.  I shall send you a
+dozen of that brandy."
+
+"No, no, I beg!" said the doctor earnestly; and his white forehead
+puckered up.
+
+"Yes, I shall.  May I smoke?"
+
+"Certainly--certainly."
+
+A very large, well-filled cigar case was already in the visitor's hands.
+
+"Take one."
+
+"No, thanks.  I never smoke."
+
+"Never mind, Hendon does.  Here, I shall leave those six for him."
+
+"I really would rather you did not, Poynter; indeed I would."
+
+"Get out?  What's the good of having these things if some one else don't
+enjoy 'em too?  Make Hendon a bit more civil to me.  He is so jolly--so
+jolly--what do you call it?--soopercilious with me.  Because I'm not a
+doctor, I suppose.  There's half a dozen good ones for him when he comes
+in.  Now then, doctor, go ahead.  Want to see my tongue?"
+
+"No--no," said the doctor; "the look of your eye is sufficient, Mr
+Poynter.  It is much clearer.  Felt any more of the chest symptoms?"
+
+"No, not so much of them; but I don't sleep as I should: feverish and
+tossy--spend half my nights punching my pillow."
+
+"Have you given up the suppers?"
+
+"Well, not quite.  You see a man can't drop everything.  I know a lot of
+men, and one's obliged, you see, to do as they do.  But now look here;
+doctor.  You've been treating me these three months."
+
+"Dear me! is it so long as that?"
+
+"More.  You've poked my chest about, and listened to my works, and given
+me all sorts of stuff to take, and told me to eat this and drink that,
+and now I suppose you think I'm sound, wind and limb?"
+
+"Certainly, my dear sir, certainly.  I told you so at the first, and
+that no treatment was necessary."
+
+"Yes, yes, all right; but I'd got to be a bit nervous doctor, and now,
+as I say, you think me sound, wind and limb?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Then you'll agree, won't you?"
+
+"Agree?" said the doctor, looking over the glasses he had put on when
+commencing to be professional.
+
+"Yes.  I'm as good a man as there is at Mincing Lane over a tea bargain;
+but a job like this knocks the wind out of me, makes me feel a damaged
+lot where the sea-water's got in, or a Maloo mixture.  Can't do it: but
+you understand."
+
+"Really, Mr Poynter, I--"
+
+"Now don't run away, doctor; don't, please.  I'm a warm man, and I'm
+getting warmer.  My house is tip-top.  I gave two-fifty for the piano, I
+did, 'pon my soul, and fifty apiece for the cut-glass chandies in the
+drawing-room.  There ain't a better garden in Sydenham.  You're willing,
+ain't you?"
+
+"Do you mean--"
+
+"Yes, that's it.  Say the word.  There, I've loved her ever since I
+first saw her.  And situated as you are, doctor--"
+
+"Mr Poynter."
+
+"No offence meant--far from it; but of course I can't help seeing how
+things are.  Come, you'll give your consent, and get hers, and I'll make
+settlements--anything you like.  You shall come and have a bit o' dinner
+with us every Sunday, and a glass o' real port wine; and if you'd rather
+have a cab to come home, why, there you are.  Come, there's my hand.
+Where's yours?"
+
+"Do I understand--"
+
+"Stop a moment, doctor.  Of course you'll attend us, whether we're ill
+or whether we ain't.  Keep us in order, like; and as to your fees, why,
+I ask you now, as a man, what is a fee to me?"
+
+"Mr Poynter!"
+
+"One moment, doctor.  I don't say anything about a brougham.  If Miss
+Richmond--I say, doctor, what made you call her Richmond and him
+Hendon?"
+
+"A foolish whim--eccentricity," said the doctor coldly.  "One child was
+born on the North Road, the other at the pretty old place on the south
+west."
+
+"I see.  Well, as I was saying, if Miss Richmond likes it to be a
+brougham, either the real thing, or on the job, she has only got to
+speak, and it's lies."
+
+"Am I to understand, Mr Poynter, that this is a formal proposal for my
+daughter's hand?"
+
+"That's it.  How you can put it, doctor!  You're right; it is, and
+there's my hand."
+
+"Mr Poynter," said the doctor, drawing himself up in his chair, and
+without taking the extended hand, "that is a matter upon which I am not
+prepared to speak."
+
+"Why, you're her father, ain't you?"
+
+"Does my daughter sanction this?"
+
+"Well--er--yes--no--hardly, because I've never put it to her plump.  But
+you know what women are--sealskins, a carriage, bit o' jewellery, _and_
+their own way.  Why, of course she does; did you ever know a woman as
+didn't want to marry?  They often say so, but--you know.  There, say the
+word: I'll just go in and see her, and it'll be a good job for all of
+us, and I shall go away with the day fixed."
+
+"No, Mr Poynter," said the doctor gravely; "I have been a medical man
+for thirty years--a great student, but I must frankly confess that I do
+_not_ know what women are.  As to my daughter, she is of an age to judge
+for herself, and when she accepts a man for her husband--"
+
+"I say, hold hard; there's nothing on, is there?"
+
+"You have told me that you love my child."
+
+"Like all that, doctor.  But you know what I mean: old lover, prior
+attachment, and that sort of thing."
+
+"As far as I know, there has never been any attachment.  Richmond is not
+like most girls."
+
+"Right doctor.  She isn't.  That fetched me.  Why, in her plain shabby
+things--"
+
+The doctor winced.  "She knocks my sister into fits, and Lyddy spends
+two-fifty a year in dressmaking and millinery, without counting
+jewellery and scent."
+
+"I may say," continued the doctor, "that my daughter has always devoted
+herself to her brother and me."
+
+"Oh, yes, doctor, I've spotted that," said the visitor, smoking
+furiously.
+
+"And I have never seen any sign of an attachment.  I once thought that
+there was a liking between her and young Mark Heath."
+
+"What, brother to that Miss Janet who comes here?" cried Poynter
+eagerly.
+
+"The same; but that was years ago."
+
+"And he's abroad, isn't he?"
+
+"He went to the Cape--to seek his fortune," said the doctor gravely;
+"but he has not been heard of now for two years."
+
+"Dead, safe!" said Poynter, drawing a breath full of relief.
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"It would be sad if the young man had ended his career like that."
+
+"Of course.  But they weren't engaged?"
+
+"Certainly not, Mr Poynter."
+
+"And you've no objection to me, doctor?"
+
+"N-no--I--that is, Mr Poynter, I look upon this as a matter for my
+daughter to decide."
+
+"Of course, doctor.  Well, I'll just finish my cigar and grog, and then
+I'll go and put it to her, plump and plain; and, as I said before, it'll
+be a fine day's work for us all."
+
+The doctor sighed.
+
+"I say, you know," continued his visitor, with the wrinkles coming about
+his eyes, "it was all a dodge of mine."
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+"There wasn't anything the matter with me when I came."
+
+"Nothing whatever," said the doctor, nodding acquiescence.
+
+"What! you knew that?"
+
+"Of course I did.  I looked upon it as all imaginary."
+
+"But you took the fees, doctor?" said the young man, laughing.
+
+"You took up my time."
+
+"But I say, doctor, isn't that too bad?"
+
+"Not at all.  My dear sir, the medical profession.  Won't I be a poor
+one if we had no patients with imaginary ills.  We treat them; they
+think we do them good; and they grow better.  Surely we earn our fees."
+
+"Oh, but, doctor," said the young man jocularly, "why not honestly tell
+them they are all right, instead of taking their coin?"
+
+"Because if we did they would not believe us, and would go to some other
+medical man."
+
+"Then you knew I was all right?"
+
+"Certainly I did."
+
+"And made me up that wretched physic to take."
+
+"You would not have been satisfied without."
+
+"Ah, well," said the young man, with a chuckle which resulted in his
+wiping his eyes with his highly scented handkerchief, "I never took a
+drop."
+
+"I know that too," said the doctor.
+
+"Ah, well; we understand one another now, and I'd better go."
+
+James Poynter, however, seemed to be in no hurry to go, but sipped his
+brandy-and-water, smoked his cigar down to the throwing-away length, and
+then brought out from his vest-pocket an amber and meerschaum
+mouthpiece, tipped with gold, into which he fitted the wet end of the
+cigar, and smoked till he could smoke no longer, when he rose,
+flush-faced, and with the dew upon his forehead.
+
+"I suppose I must go and get it done, doctor," he said; "but it's rather
+a--well, it makes a man feel--I say, doctor, what is there in a pretty
+woman that makes a man feel half afraid of her, like?"
+
+"I told you, Mr Poynter, a short time back, that I did not understand
+women," said the doctor gravelly.  "I cannot tell.  Say Nature's
+heaven-gift for her defence."
+
+"Humph!" said Poynter, staring.  "I say, doctor--cigar, you know.  Could
+you give a fellow a mouthful of something that would take the taste out
+of one's mouth?  Going to see a lady."
+
+"Try cold water," said the doctor, in a tone of voice which sounded like
+throwing that fluid upon he young man's hopes; but he had so much faith
+in himself that the verbal water glanced from his fine feathers, and
+after rinsing his mouth, he shook hands clumsily, intending to leave the
+doctor's fee within his palm, but managed to drop the more valuable of
+the two coins on the edge of the fender, when it flew beneath the grate,
+and had to be fished out with the tongs.
+
+"Dodgy stuff, money, doctor," said Poynter, setting down the fire-iron,
+and blowing the coin.
+
+"Don't take all that trouble, pray."
+
+"Oh, it's no trouble, doctor.  I was never above picking up a sov.
+There, don't you come.  I know my way;" and he left the consulting-room
+to go into the house and learn his fate.
+
+"Brute!" said the doctor, with a look of disgust, as he sank into his
+chair.  "Why is Fate so unfair with her gold!  I thought as much, but
+Richmond will say _no_."
+
+"Old lunatic!" said James Poynter, with his fat upper lip curling in
+disgust, as his eyes lit on the row of glass jars with their ghastly
+contents.  "Once I get my lady home, I don't mean to see much of him.
+Here, boy," he said, as he reached the hall, and so suddenly that there
+was nearly a serious accident, for Bob was coming down the balustrade
+from the first floor, gliding upon the central part of his person with
+arms and legs extended--taking hold having grown common.
+
+The sharp "Here, boy!" so startled him that he overbalanced himself,
+went right over, but caught at the upright spindly bars, and so far
+saved himself that he came down upon his feet in a couple of
+somersaults, recovering himself directly, and coming forward with a grin
+upon his bloodless face, as if the feat had been intended.
+
+"Ah, you'll break your neck some day.  Here's a shilling for you.  Take
+me into Miss Chartley at once."
+
+Bob bit the coin, and slipped it into his pocket before he replied,
+"Gone out."
+
+"Gone out?  Will she be long?"
+
+"Dessay she'll be hours, sir."
+
+James Poynter stamped with his foot, and muttered something
+unparliamentary.
+
+"Tell Miss Chartley," he said.  "No, don't tell her anything.  Here, let
+me out."
+
+Bob ran to the ponderous old door, and stood holding it open with his
+eyes glittering as he stared at the visitor, till he had hurried out
+with his hat set very much on one side, and walked sharply away.
+
+"Thought he'd want the bob again," said the boy.  "Just do for the old
+gal.  Well, I'm blessed!"
+
+This last consequent upon his catching sight of a shabby-looking figure
+in black, with a damaged bonnet, and a weirdly dissipated look, rising
+slowly into sight up the area-steps, and then coming out of the creaking
+gate to the boy, who grew more serious the nearer the figure came.
+
+It was not a pleasant face to look upon, for it was not over-clean; the
+black and grey hair was ill-arranged, and the eyes that shone above the
+flushed cheeks belied the woman sadly if they did not tell the truth
+about potations.
+
+"Why, Bob, my darling," she said, with an exaggerated fawning smile,
+"and how is my bonny boy?"
+
+"Here stow that, mother," cried the lad, struggling from an embrace.
+"Don't!  Can't yer see I've been brushing my hair?"
+
+"Yes, and it looks beautiful, ducky.  I've been knocking ever so long at
+the hairy door, and that fine madam saw me, and wouldn't let me in."
+
+"No; she says I ain't never to let you in no more."
+
+"Not let me in no more to see my own boy?"
+
+"No; she says you took some fresh butter last time you was here, and you
+sha'n't come."
+
+"Then you sha'n't stay, Bob; I'll take you away, my darling.  Oh, it's a
+wicked, cruel world!"
+
+"Here, I say, mother, stow that.  Whatcher want?"
+
+"What, my darling?  Yes, that's it: want--staring want; but you sha'n't
+stay here."
+
+"Get out.  I shall."
+
+"No, you sha'n't, you ungrateful boy.  I won't be separated from my own
+child.  Bob dear, have you got any money?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Anybody give you anything?" whined the woman.  "There ain't been
+nothing pass my lips this blessed day."
+
+"Oho! what a wunner!" cried the boy.  "Why, I can smell yer."
+
+"No, no, my dear; that's Mrs Billson as you can smell.  I've been
+talking to her, and she drink 'orrid.  Ain'tcher got a few pence for
+your poor lone mother, who's ready to break her heart sometimes because
+she's parted from her boy?"
+
+"Will you go away if I give you something?"
+
+"Go away?  Oho!" whined the woman, wiping off a maudlin tear with the
+end of her shawl.
+
+"Here, I say, don't cry on the front-doorsteps.  Come down in the hairy,
+where nobody can't see you."
+
+"Driven away by my own boy!  Oho, oho!"
+
+"'Tain't my fault.  Doctor said you wasn't to come, and if you did he'd
+send me away."
+
+"Then come home, Bob, to your poor heartbroken mother."
+
+"Walker!" cried the boy.  "Why yer ain't got no home to give a chap."
+
+"No home?"
+
+"Well, I don't call that a home, living up in a hattic along o' old
+Mother Billson."
+
+"Oh, you ungrateful boy!  Ain't it enough for me to have come down so
+that I'm obliged to see my own son in liveries, without him turning
+against me."
+
+"Who's a-turning again you?  Don't cry, I tell yer," he said, angrily
+stamping a foot.
+
+"Then you shall come home."
+
+"Sha'n't.  I ain't going to leave the doctor and Miss Rich for nobody,
+so there."
+
+"Ugh, you viper!"
+
+"Here, stow that.  Who's a viper?  See what they've done for me when I
+was runned over.  Why, if it hadn't been for Miss Rich a-nussing of me
+when you was allus tipsy, you wouldn't have had no boy at all, only a
+dead 'un berrid out at Finchley along o' the old man."
+
+"Ah, you wicked ungrateful little serpent!  They've been setting you
+again' your poor suffering mother."
+
+"Stow that, I say.  You'll have the doctor hear you if you don't be
+quiet."
+
+"I won't be quiet, you wicked, wicked--"
+
+"Look here!  If you don't hold your row, I won't give you the bob and
+two coppers I've got for you."
+
+"Have you got some money for your poor mother, then?"
+
+"I've got a bob a gent give me, and twopence, my half of what we got for
+the bones me and 'Lisbeth sold."
+
+"Ah?  I'm a poor suffering woman, and I do say things sometimes as I
+don't mean," whined the wretched creature.  "Give me the money, dear,
+and let me go."
+
+"If I give it to yer, you won't say no more about my coming away?"
+
+"No, dear; I only want to see you happy."
+
+"Well, there, then," he said, giving her the coins; "and, I say--"
+
+"Yes, my precious."
+
+"You ain't to spend none of it in gin."
+
+"Gin?  Oh, no, my dear."
+
+"Get some pudding out of Holborn, and a saveloy; and, I say, mother, get
+yourself a bit o' tea."
+
+"Yes, my darling."
+
+"And don't let Mrs Billson gammon you into lending her none of it."
+
+"No, my dear.  And there, good-bye, Bob; be a good boy.  I won't come
+wherriting of you no more'n I can help."
+
+The miserable object, from whom out of compassion Richmond Chartley had
+rescued the boy, shuffled along the street to the nearest public-house,
+to buy more plus spirit with which to attack her miserable minus spirit,
+with the result that, as a mathematical problem, one would kill the
+other as sure as Fate.
+
+Meanwhile Bob stood on the step watching her.
+
+"Wonder whether the old gal does like me?  Somehow she allus goes as
+soon as she gets all a chap's got.  Now she'll go and have a drop.  She
+allus does when she says she won't."
+
+"Bob! you Bob!" came in a shrill voice from the kitchen stairs.
+
+"Can't you see I'm a-coming?" cried the boy; and hurriedly closing the
+door, he returned to his work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+PUBLIC OPINION ON CURRENT EVENTS.
+
+These was a desperate scuffle going on round the corner as Hendon
+Chartley came by one day, and he would have passed on without seeing it,
+only that his English blood was stirred at the way in which the odds
+were all on one side--four boys being engaged in pummelling one who, in
+spite of the thrashing he was getting, fought on boldly, till, with a
+couple of sharp cuts of his cane, Hendon settled two of the combatants,
+when the other two ran away.
+
+"Thankye, sir."
+
+"You young dog, is it you?" cried Hendon.
+
+"Yes, sir; and I should ha' licked all on 'em if you hadn't come."
+
+"Why, you ungrateful young rascal, be off back and wash your face.  Look
+here: I'll have you turned away."
+
+"No, sir; please, sir, don't, sir.  I couldn't help it, sir, I was
+obliged to fight, sir; I was indeed, sir.  Oh, don't, sir; you hurts!"
+
+Hendon listened to no remonstrance, but catching the boy by the collar
+he thrust him back till he reached the door, which he opened with his
+latch-key, and, bundling the boy in, sent him staggering along the hall
+as he closed the door, and went on once more.
+
+"Yah! who cares for you?" cried the boy angrily; and then his
+countenance changed, and he broke into a smile as he found himself face
+to face with Rich.
+
+"Why, Bob," she exclaimed, "what is the matter?"
+
+"I couldn't help it, Miss.  Mr Hendon shoved me in like that.  I meant
+to come in by the area."
+
+"But why did he bring you back like that?  Did he know where you had
+been?"
+
+"Oh, no, Miss!  I never tells anybody where I'm going with a note for
+you; not even Mr Poynter, Miss.  Here's the letter; and Miss Heath said
+I was to give her love to you, and she hadn't been because she was so
+busy."
+
+Bob drew a letter from his pocket, and as he did so made upon it an ugly
+mark.
+
+"Why, Bob, your hand's bleeding!"
+
+"Is it, Miss?  Oh, ah! so it is.  That ain't nothink."
+
+"You are all over mud, too.  Have you met with an accident again?"
+
+The boy's lips parted to say "_Yes_," but as he gazed up into the clear
+searching eyes which looked down so kindly into his, he shook his head.
+
+"No, Miss," he said boldly.
+
+"Why, Bob, you have not been fighting?"
+
+"I didn't want to fight, Miss; but what's a chap to do?"
+
+"Surely not fight when he is sent on an errand," said Rich severely.
+
+"I didn't want to fight," said the boy again: "but I was fighting, and
+Mr Hendon ketched me."
+
+"I'm afraid, Bob, I shall be obliged to speak to my father, and have you
+sent away."
+
+"No, no! don't do that, Miss; please don't.  I will be so very useful,
+and I will do everythink 'Lisbeth tells me.  Don't send a feller away."
+
+"We cannot keep a boy who behaves so badly," continued Rich, who was
+trying to hide being amused and pleased at the boy's affectionate
+earnestness.
+
+"Then I won't fight no more," said Bob.  "But you don't know what it is,
+Miss.  You don't know how the fellers tease yer.  They're allers at yer.
+Soon as yer goes down the street, some one shouts `Bottles!'  Jest
+because I takes out the physic.  I should jest like to make some on 'em
+take it.  I'd give 'em a dose."
+
+"But, Bob, you ought to be too sensible to take any notice about a rude
+boy calling you names."
+
+"So I am, Miss," cried the boy, "ever so much.  I never did nothing till
+they began on the doctor."
+
+"Began on the doctor?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; saying all sorts o' things about him.  I shouldn't like to
+tell you what."
+
+"And I should not like to hear, Bob," said Rich gravely, as she went
+up-stairs; while after waiting till he heard a door close, Bob went
+cautiously into the surgery, crept to the door of the consulting-room,
+and listened to find out whether the doctor was there, and finding him
+absent, the boy went nimbly to the nest of drawers, opened one, and took
+out a pair of scissors before lifting a tin case from a corner--a case
+which looked like the holder of a map.
+
+Bob removed the lid, drew out a roll of diachylon, and after cutting off
+a strip, he replaced the lid and scissors, and descended to the kitchen,
+where Elizabeth was peeling potatoes, and making the droning noise which
+she evidently believed to be a song.
+
+"Look ye here!" cried the boy, triumphantly showing his bleeding
+knuckles.
+
+Elizabeth uttered a faint cry.
+
+"Why, you've been fighting!" she cried.  "Oh, you bad wicked boy!"
+
+"So are you," cried Bob tauntingly: "you'd fight if the chaps served you
+as they did me, and said what they did about the doctor."
+
+"What did they say?" said the girl, giving her nose a rub as if to make
+it more plastic.
+
+"You bathe them cuts nistely and put some sticking-plaister on, and I'll
+tell you."
+
+Elizabeth set down the potato basin, wiped her hands, and after filling
+a tin bowl full of cold water, and fetching a towel, she tenderly bathed
+the boy's dirty injured hands.
+
+"Now tell me what they said about the doctor," she said coaxingly.
+
+"Why, they gets saying things to try and get me took away.  My old woman
+don't like me stopping."
+
+"She's a dreadful old creature," said Elizabeth angrily, "and I won't
+have her here."
+
+"So's your old woman a dreadful old creature," retorted Bob, "and I
+won't have her here."
+
+"My mother's been dead ten years," said Elizabeth, battling with an
+obstinate bit of mud, "and I won't have you speak to me in that impudent
+way."
+
+"Then you leave my poor old woman alone."
+
+"You let her stop away instead of always coming down them area-steps,
+and you encouraging her."
+
+"That I don't, so come now.  She's my old woman and I'm very fond on
+her, but I wish she wouldn't come.  She allus comes when I'm busy."
+
+"And she ought to be very glad you are here."
+
+"But she ain't.  She says doctors are bad 'uns.  And that they do all
+sorts o' things as they oughtn't to.  She was in the orspittle once, and
+she said it was horrid, and if she hadn't made haste and got well they'd
+have 'sected her."
+
+"Lor!" said Elizabeth, drying the boy's hands with a series of gentle
+pats of the towel.
+
+"And she says she knows the doctor does them sort o' things on the sly,
+and that she shall take me away, and I don't want to go."
+
+"Well, that didn't make you fight, did it?"
+
+"Yes, it did, now.  I was going to tell you, on'y you're in such a
+hurry, I went to take a letter for Miss Rich this morning, and as I was
+coming back, I meets mother, and she was asking me if I'd got any--"
+
+"Money?" said Elizabeth promptly.
+
+"Well, s'pose she did?  If your mother warn't dead, and hadn't any
+money, p'raps if she met you in the street she'd ask you for money.
+Then how would you like it if four chaps come and said, `Hallo, Bottles,
+how many dead 'uns have you got in the dust-hole?'"
+
+"Lor! did they say that?" said Elizabeth, squeezing the boy's hand in
+the interest she took.
+
+"I say don't!  You hurt.  Here, cut up some o' that dacklum and warm it,
+and stick it on.  Then one on 'em said he looked through the keyhole one
+day, and saw the doctor sharpening his knife; and that set mother off
+crying, and she sets down on a doorstep, and goes on till she made me
+wild; and the more she cried and said she'd take me away the more they
+danced about, and called me body-snatcher."
+
+"How awful!" said Elizabeth, holding a strip of diachylon at the end of
+the scissors to warm at the fire.
+
+"But I got the old woman off at last for twopence, and soon as she'd
+gone I was coming home, and I met them four again, and they began at me
+once more."
+
+"Did they, though?" said Elizabeth.
+
+"Yes, and I pitched into 'em: and so would any one, I say.  Why, it's
+enough to make the old woman fetch me away.  I say, Liz, you don't want
+me to go, do you?"
+
+"Indeed, but I do, sir."
+
+"No, you don't.  I say, Liz, I'm so precious hungry.  Got anything to
+give a fellow?"
+
+"No.  You took out two slices of bread and dripping to eat as you went."
+
+Bob nodded.
+
+"Why you never went and give them to that old woman, did you?"
+
+"Ah, your mother's been dead ten years," said Bob sententiously.
+"S'pose I did give it to her?  It was mine, and I wasn't obliged to eat
+it, was I?  Thankye, that'll do."
+
+Bob patted the plaister down on his knuckles, and had reached the
+kitchen door, when Elizabeth of the smudgy face called him by name, and,
+with as near an approach to a smile as she could display, showed him a
+piece of pudding on the cupboard shell.
+
+"And you said you wanted me to go," said Bob, with his mouth full, after
+a busy pause; "but I know'd you didn't mean it.  I say, Liz, is that big
+gent with the rings and chains and shiny hat going to marry Miss Rich?"
+
+"I don't know," said Elizabeth, suddenly growing deeply interested.
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he's always coming to see the doctor, and whenever I let him in
+he asks me where Miss Rich is, and gives me something."
+
+"Lor!"
+
+"Yes, and he looks at her so."
+
+"Do he, now?  And what does Miss Rich say?"
+
+"Oh, she only talks to him about its being fine or rainy, and as if she
+didn't want to stop in the room."
+
+"Then she is," said Elizabeth triumphantly.
+
+"Is?  Is what?"
+
+"Going to marry him.  That's the proper way to a lady to behave."
+
+"Oh!" said Bob shortly, and a curious frown came over his countenance.
+"I don't like him, somehow.  I wish one didn't want money quite so bad."
+
+Bob went up-stairs, and the place being empty he shut himself up in the
+surgery, to indulge in a morbid taste for trying flavour or odour of
+everything in the place, and fortunately so far without fatal or even
+dangerous results.
+
+After a time he had a fit, and prescribed for himself _Syrup Aurantii_--
+so much in cold water, leaving himself in imagination in the chair while
+he mixed the medicine, and going back to the chair to take it.  After
+recovering from his imaginary fit, he spelled over a number of the
+_Lancet_, dwelling long over in account of an operation of a novel kind;
+and ending by standing upon a chair and carefully noting the contents of
+the doctor's glass jars of preparations, which he turned round and round
+till he was tired, and came down, to finish the morning by helping
+himself to about a teaspoonful of chlorate of potassium, which he placed
+in his trousers-pocket, not from any intention of taking it to purify
+his blood, but to drop in pinches in the kitchen fire and startle
+Elizabeth.
+
+"Teach her not to say things agen my old woman," said Bob.  "Just as if
+she can help being old!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+A SISTER'S TRIAL.
+
+"Don't ask questions.  There's the money; take it.  You don't think I
+stole it, do you?"
+
+"Stole it, Hendon dear?  No, of course.  How can you talk so?"
+
+"Then, why don't you take it?"
+
+"Because, as your sister, I think I have a right to know whence it
+comes."
+
+"And, as your brother, seeing how we live here, in everybody's debt, I
+don't think you need be so jolly particular."
+
+"However poor we are, Hendon, we need not lose our self-respect."
+
+"Self-respect!  How is a man to have self-respect, without a penny in
+his pocket?"
+
+"You just showed me pounds."
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"How did you come by it, Hendon?"
+
+"Don't ask," he cried impatiently.  "Take it, and pay that poor girl
+some wages on account, and give young Bob a tightener.  Don't be so
+squeamish, Rich."
+
+"I will not take the money.  You deceived me once before."
+
+"Well, if I'd told you I won it at pool you wouldn't have taken it."
+
+"No," said Rich firmly, "I would sooner have lived on dry bread.  This
+money, then, is part of some gambling transaction?"
+
+"It isn't."
+
+"Then how did you come by it?"
+
+"Well, then, if you will have it, Poynter lent it to me."
+
+"Oh, Hendon, Hendon, has it come to this?" cried Richmond piteously.
+
+"Yes, it has.  What is a fellow to do?  Home's wretched; one never has a
+shilling.  The guvnor's mad over his essence, as he calls it, and I
+believe, if he saw us starve, he would smile and sigh."
+
+"No, no.  He is so intent upon his discovery, that he does not realise
+our position."
+
+"His discovery!  Bah!  Lunacy!  There isn't a fellow at Guy's who
+wouldn't laugh at me if I told him what the guvnor does.  Rich, old
+girl, I'm sick of it!  It was madness for me to go through all this
+training, when I might have been earning money as porter or a clerk.
+Everything has been swallowed up in the fees.  Why, if Jem Poynter
+hadn't come forward like a man, and paid the last--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, what are you shouting at?"
+
+"Did Mr Poynter pay your last fees at Guy's?"
+
+"Of course he did.  Do you suppose the money was caught at the bottom of
+a spout after a shower?"
+
+"Hendon, dear Hendon!"
+
+"There, it's no use to be so squeamish.  If those last hadn't been paid,
+it would have been like throwing away all that had been paid before."
+
+"I did not know of this--I did not know of this!"
+
+"Don't, don't, dear!  I couldn't help it.  I used to feel as bad as you
+do; but this cursed poverty hardens a man.  I fought against it; but
+Poynter was always after me, tempting me, standing dinners when I was as
+hungry as a hound; giving me wine and cigars.  He has almost forced
+money on me lots of times; and at--at other times--when I've had a few
+glasses--I haven't refused it.  It's all Janet's fault."
+
+"Hendon!"
+
+"Well, so it is!" cried the young fellow passionately.  "If she hadn't
+thrown me over as she did--"
+
+"To save you from additional poverty."
+
+"No, it didn't; it made me desperate, and ready to drink when a chap
+like Poynter was jolly, and forced champagne on me.  I was as proud as
+you are once, but my pride's about all gone!"
+
+"Hush!  I will not hear you speak like that, Hendon, my own darling
+brother!  For Janet's sake--"
+
+"She's nothing to me now.  I was thrown over for some other fellow."
+
+"How dare you, sir!  You know it is not true!  Dear Janet!  Working
+daily like a slave, and offering me her hard earnings when we were so
+pressed."
+
+"Did she--did she?" cried Hendon excitedly, and with his pale face
+flushing up.
+
+"There," cried Richmond half-laughingly, half-scornfully, "confess, sir,
+that a lying spirit was on your lips.  Say you believe that of Janet and
+that you do not still love her, if you dare!"
+
+Hendon Chartley let his head fall into his hands, and bent down, with
+his shoulders heaving with the emotion he could not conceal, while his
+sister bent over him and laid her hand upon his head.
+
+He started up at her touch, seized and kissed her hand, and then, going
+to the side of the room, he laid his arm against the panel and his brow
+upon it, to stand talking there.
+
+"I can't help it, Rich dear," he groaned; "I feel like a brute beast
+sometimes, and as if I can never look her in the face again.  I've
+drunk; I've gone wild in a kind of despair; and Poynter seems to have
+been always by me to egg me on, and get me under his thumb."
+
+"My own brother!"
+
+"Don't touch me, dear.  I can't stop here.  I'll do as Mark Heath did,
+and if Janet'll wait, perhaps some day I may come back to her a better
+man, and she may forgive me."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I don't believe anything of her but what is good and true; God bless
+her for a little darling--Why, Rich!"
+
+He turned sharply, for a low moan had escaped his sister, and he found
+that she had sunk into a chair, and was sobbing bitterly, with her face
+in her hands.
+
+"Rich darling, I did not mean it.  What have I said?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing, dear; only you--you must not leave me."
+
+"But Mark Heath--Ah! what a fool I am!" he cried, catching his sister in
+his arms.  "I did not think what I was saying; and, Rich dear, hold up,
+I don't believe the dear old boy is dead."
+
+"Hush, Hendon dear," said Richmond, mastering her emotion; "I want--I
+want to talk to you about Mr Poynter."
+
+"Yes, all right.  Sit down, dear, and I won't be such a fool."
+
+"You must not leave me."
+
+"I won't.  I'll stop and fight it out like a man.  And as for James
+Poynter, I wish I hadn't let him pay those rates."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I didn't like to tell you, but I let out to him about the gas and water
+and the rest of it, and next day he gave me all the receipts.  It was
+one night after I'd dined with him at his club, and I was a bit primed.
+I thought it was very noble of him then, but when I saw it all I did
+nothing but curse and swear.  It was nearly the death of a patient at
+Guy's, for I forget what I was about.  Hang it, Rich dear! don't look so
+white as that."
+
+"I--I was wondering why we had not been troubled more," she stammered;
+and then, with her face flushing, she turned fiercely upon her brother.
+
+"Hendon," she cried, "do you know what this means?"
+
+There was utter silence, and Hendon Chartley turned his face away.
+
+"I say, do you know what this means?  Hendon, speak?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was slowly and unwillingly said.
+
+"And you have encouraged this man to make advances to the woman your
+best friend--almost your brother--loved?"
+
+"Oh, Rich!"
+
+"Speak."
+
+"No, no!  I never encouraged him.  I fought against it, and it has made
+me half mad when the great vulgar boor has sat talking about you, and
+drinking your health and praising you.  Rich, I tell you I've felt
+sometimes as if I could smash the champagne bottle over his thick skull
+for even daring to think about you."
+
+"And yet you have let him do all this!" cried Richmond, with her eyes
+flashing.  "Hendon--brother, for the sake of this man's money and the
+comforts it would bring, do you wish to see me his wife?"
+
+"Damn it, no!  I'd sooner see you dead!" cried the young man
+passionately.  "Say the word, old girl, and I'll fight for you as a
+brother should.  I'll half-starve myself but what I'll get on, and pay
+that thick-skinned City elephant every penny I've had."
+
+"And some day Janet shall put her arms round your neck, and tell you
+that you are the best and truest boy that ever lived."
+
+"Ah! some day," said Hendon sadly.
+
+"Yes, some day," cried Rich, clasping him in her arms.  "Hendon dear,
+you've made me strong where I felt very, very weak, and now we can join
+hands and fight the enemy to the very last."
+
+"When old Mark shall come back."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"No, I'll not hush!  When dear old Mark shall come back, and all these
+troubles be like a dream."
+
+Richmond looked up with a sad smile in her brother's face, and kissed
+him once again.
+
+"And Janet--" he said hoarsely, after he had returned her caress.
+
+"Is acting as a true woman should.  Take her as a pattern, dear, and
+show some self-denial."
+
+"Why not take you, Rich?" he said kindly as he gazed in the sweet
+careworn face before him.  "There, I won't ask you to have the money.
+I'm off; if I stop here longer I shall be acting like a girl.  As for
+Poynter, if he comes and pesters you--"
+
+"Mr Poynter will not come," said Richmond, drawing herself up proudly.
+"He has acted like a coward to us both."
+
+"One moment, Rich," said Hendon eagerly: "do you think--the governor--"
+
+"Has taken money from him?  No."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"My father, whatever his weakness, is a true gentleman at heart.  He
+would not do this thing."
+
+Hendon advanced a step to take his sister in his arms, but in his eyes
+then she wore so much the aspect of an indignant queen that he raised
+her thin white hand to his lips instead, and hurried from the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+THE SURGERY IMP.
+
+Dr Chartley sat in his consulting-room, with a glass jar, retort,
+receiver, and spirit-lamp before him.  The lamp was on the table, and
+made with its shaded light and that of the fire a pleasant glow, which
+took off some of the desolation of the bare consulting-room on that
+bitter night.
+
+He had been busy over his discovery, and confessed that it was not so
+far advanced as he could wish.
+
+"There is a something wanting," he had muttered more than once; and,
+wearied at last, he was thinking more seriously than usual of his son,
+of Richmond, and of James Poynter.
+
+"It would place her above the reach of want," he said dreamily; "she
+would be happy if anything befell me.  Yes, money is a power, and we are
+now so poor, so poor, that life seems to have become one bitter
+struggle, in which I am too weak to engage."
+
+He sighed, and rose, walked into the miserably cold surgery, where Bob
+was diligently polishing the front out of the nest of drawers containing
+drugs, and having threads of cotton from the ragged duster hanging upon
+the broken knobs.
+
+"Good boy--good industrious boy," said the doctor, patting his head
+gently, before taking up a little graduated glass, pouring in a small
+quantity from a bottle at the top of the shelves, and after turning it
+into a medicine glass, he filled up with water and drank it.
+
+Bob took the glass the doctor handed to him, smiling.
+
+"Good for a weary troubled old man, boy," he said, "but it will kill
+you.  Don't touch--don't touch--don't touch."
+
+He nodded and went back into the consulting-room, to compose himself
+upon the couch for his evening sleep, which he took according to custom,
+and from which he awoke refreshed and ready to work for hours, late into
+the night, at his wearisome chimerical task, with which he grew more
+infatuated the more his reason suggested that his work was vain.
+
+The boy began to whistle very softly as the doctor disappeared.  Then he
+washed and wiped the glass, and put it back in its place ready for use.
+After this he threw himself upon the settee, took hold of his right leg
+with his left hand, by the ankle, dragged it up, and held it across his
+body rigidly as if it were a banjo, and began to strum imaginary strings
+with his right hand, while in a whisper he sang a song about a yaller
+gal somewhere in the south, with close-shut eyes and a long wide mouth,
+and so on, through seven verses, with a chorus to each, all of which
+seemed to afford him the greatest gratification, and which he
+supplemented by leaping up and going round the surgery, holding out the
+imaginary instrument for contributions.
+
+These were acknowledged with proper darky grimaces and grins, and seemed
+to be so abundant that Bob returned to the settee, and this time played
+the bones with a couple of pair saved from a brisket of beef, but
+without making a sound.
+
+Another collection and another silent solo, this time on the tambourine,
+which the boy pretended to beat with frantic energy, ending by going on
+tiptoe to peep through the keyhole, and satisfy himself that the doctor
+was in a deep sleep.
+
+There was no doubt about that, so the boy's hour or two of indulgence,
+on which he regularly counted, began.
+
+He dashed at the settee, threw it open, stooped down to take something
+out, but rose again, closed the lid, and listened as if afraid of being
+caught.
+
+Then shaking his head, he ran to the door, which opened into the lobby
+and then into the street, from which place he came, helping himself
+along by the wall to the settee, upon which he sank, and after lying
+down and laying his leg out carefully, he began to play double parts,
+that of surgeon and patient.  For, after feeling the leg and shaking his
+head, he said to himself, "Ah, we'll soon put that right, my man."
+
+Jumping up, he ran to a drawer, from, which he brought splints and
+bandages, trotted back to the settee, and with ghastly minuteness--the
+result of having been present at an accident, and studious readings of
+Dr Chartley's books--he proceeded to set a serious compound fracture,
+assuring himself that he bore it like a man, and that he need not be
+under the least apprehension, for in such a healthy subject the joint
+would knit together before long, and he would be as strong as ever.
+
+All this was in company with the business he was carrying on of applying
+the splints and bandaging the broken leg; after which, by aid of the
+doctor's walking-sticks, he limped to the door, as there was no one to
+carry him, thanked himself for his kindness, and in imagination
+departed, leaving himself in the character of the doctor, whose walk he
+imitated as he drew out a large pill-box, opened it, and took a small
+pinch of magnesia as if it were snuff.
+
+Another peep at the doctor through the keyhole, and a run to the door,
+to make sure of there being no interruption there, and then the boy's
+face assumed a very serious expression.  He took the cloth from the
+little table in the corner, rolled up the hearthrug longwise, and tied
+it in two places with string, and then treating it as a patient, he laid
+it on the settee, and drew over it the table-cover.
+
+He was not satisfied, though, and getting a square of paper, such as
+would be used to wrap up a bottle of medicine, he poked his finger
+through twice for eyes, made a slit for a mouth, and puckered the paper
+for a nose.
+
+This rough mask he tied at the end of the long roll, drew the
+table-cover up to the face, and then came to see the patient, carried on
+an imaginary conversation with a colleague, and ended by going to a
+cupboard and getting out a long mahogany case.
+
+Bob's reading for the past two years had not been the wholesome and
+unwholesome literature provided for our youth, but the contents of the
+doctor's little library, the _Lancet_, and the _Medical Times_.  These
+proceedings were the offspring.
+
+To carry out the next proceedings, Bob took off his jacket and rolled up
+his sleeves; informed his colleague that it was a bad case--a diseased
+heart--and the only hope for the patient's life was to take it out
+completely.
+
+This Bob proceeded to do with goblin-like delight.  He turned the
+table-cover half down before opening the mahogany case, which contained
+a set of long amputating knives; and these he tried one after the other,
+to satisfy himself about the edge before commencing the operation, with
+great gusto, cutting the string that bound the hearthrug, making an
+incision, and extracting the heart.  Next the place was sewn up, the
+cover replaced, the knives put away with horrible realism, the patient's
+pulse felt and a little stimulus administered--the boy taking this
+himself--to wit, a little ammonia and water.
+
+Next the table-cover was drawn off, the hearthrug restored to its place;
+and, grinning now hugely, Bob went to a drawer, and got out the doctor's
+tooth-drawing instruments--for the doctor belonged to the old school,
+and in distant times had not been above removing a decayed and aching
+molar from a patient's jaw.
+
+The boy flourished the instruments about with evident enjoyment, going
+as far as to take a good hold of one of his teeth, but he refrained from
+pulling, and rubbed his half-numbed hands.
+
+It suddenly seemed to occur to him that he had not put on his jacket,
+and resuming this, and proving its many buttons to be a sham, for it
+fastened in a feminine manner by means of a series of hooks and eyes, he
+made a bound to the settee, grinning with pleasure as he threw it open,
+dived down, and brought out a glistening white human skull, handling it
+with a weird kind of delight painted in his face.
+
+He took the ghastly object, and fixed it upon a knob, one of those upon
+the back of the old-fashioned chair in the middle of the room, draped it
+round with the table-cover; and drew back to admire his handiwork.
+
+"Oh, if our 'Lisbeth would come in now!" he said, with a chuckle, as he
+rubbed his hands down his sides before proceeding to the greatest bit of
+enjoyment he had in his lonely life at the doctor's.
+
+From the very first the doctor's surgery and consulting-room had had a
+strange fascination for him, and whenever he was missing, the
+maid-of-all-work, who rarely showed her face out of the dim kitchen,
+knew that the boy would not be playing truant from his work or playing
+with other lads of his age, but would be found reading, dusting, or
+amusing himself in the surgery, smelling bottles, opening drawers, or
+standing on a chair, gazing at the ghastly preparations in one or other
+of the row of glass jars.
+
+His pranks he managed to keep secret, arranging to enjoy them when the
+doctor was asleep, and he was not likely to be disturbed.
+
+The present was his favourite feat from its reality.  There was
+something to go at, he always said, and for the hundredth time, perhaps,
+after performing the operation, and restoring with the help of a little
+gum, he took up the doctor's tooth-key, fixed it carefully round a
+perfectly sound molar in the fine specimen upon whose excellences the
+doctor had before now lectured to students, and steadying the skull, the
+boy pretended to engage in a terrible struggle; then gave a quick
+twitch, and brought out the tooth, which he held with a smile as he
+struck an attitude before its silent owner.
+
+The boy had seemed goblin-like before, but as he now stood there before
+the glistening relic of mortality, over which he had partly thrown the
+corner of the table-cloth, the scene was weird and grim in the extreme;
+for the one uncovered eye-socket seemed to leer at him in company with a
+ghastly pride, as if rejoicing at the relief the operation had afforded.
+
+"Now yer better, ain't yer?" said Bob.  "Eh?  Ah, I thought you would
+be.  He was a tight 'un.  Some 'un coming."
+
+Quick as thought, the boy snatched the skull from the back of the chair,
+slipped it into the long chest, closed the lid, thrust the tooth-key
+back into the drawer, and had thrown the cover on the table before the
+door at the end of the house-passage was opened, disclosing him, in
+spite of all his efforts, looking as if the mischief which lurked in the
+corners of his mouth, and flashed from his eyes, had been running to the
+full extent of its chain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+AGONY POINT.
+
+"Is that all?  What a fuss over a little pain!"  What many would say to
+a suffering friend when sound and well themselves.  What Richmond
+Chartley was ready to say to herself as she paced the room, with one
+hand pressed to her face, where the agonising pain seemed to start as a
+centre, and then ramify in jerks through every nerve.
+
+Toothache, face-ache, neuralgia, according to fashion, but maddening all
+the same.  A pain born of care and anxiety, close confinement,
+abstinence, the damp unchanging foggy air, and settled in the face of a
+heroine, to take, as it were, all the romance of her history.
+
+But there it was all the same, fiercely stabbing, jerking, as if some
+virulent little demon were holding ends of the facial nerves in a pair
+of pincers, and waiting till the sufferer was a little calm for a few
+moments before giving the nerve a savage jig.
+
+After the tug a pause of sickening agony, and then that slow, red-hot
+suffering again, as if a blunt augur was being made to form a channel
+beneath the teeth, so that the aching pains, as of hot lead, might run
+round without let or hindrance.
+
+Neuralgia, with sleepless nights; neuralgia, with Hendon Chartley's
+progress at the hospital; neuralgia, with the trouble about Janet;
+neuralgia, with James Poynter's coarse vulgar face full of effrontery
+always before her, flaunting his possessions, his power, and his
+influence, and staring with parted lips over the words which somehow he
+had never yet dared to utter, but which sooner or later she knew must
+come.
+
+Neuralgia, with the constant dread that some day her father would
+indulge too deeply in the opiate she knew he took every evening;
+neuralgia, with the constant carking care of the unpaid tradespeople:
+and, above all, that wearisome agony, mingled with the chilling
+heartache and those memories of the man from whom she had parted when in
+his ardent desire he had told her that it was for her sake he was going
+to leave England, to come back some day a rich man, and ask her to be
+his wife.
+
+"Dead, dead, dead!" moaned Rich, as she paced the room; "and if I, too,
+could only be sleeping, for it is more than I can bear!"
+
+But as the words left her lips, she threw her head back, and pressed her
+long hair from her face.
+
+"What a coward I am!" she cried, "with others looking to me for help,
+and shrinking from bearing a little pain!"
+
+She hurried to the door, telling herself that there was relief in the
+surgery for all she suffered; but as she went along the dark passage to
+the door she felt that there was one only anodyne for the greater pain
+she bore.
+
+As she slowly approached there was a quick scuffing noise, a dull rattle
+as of something falling, and the loud closing of a heavy lid; then, as
+she opened the door, she found Bob turning to meet her with an innocent
+smile upon his face, while he was uttering a low humming noise, as if he
+were practising the art of imitating a musical bee.
+
+"What have you been doing, Bob?" said Rich hastily.
+
+"Me, Miss?  Doing?" said the boy wonderingly.  "I ain't a-been doing
+nothing.  'Tain't likely, 'mong all these here dangerous thinks;" and
+Bob waved his hand round the surgery, as if indicating the bottles and
+specimen jars.
+
+"Because you have been warned frequently, sir, not to meddle."
+
+"Course I have, Miss, and I wouldn't do no harm."
+
+"Is my father asleep?"
+
+"Jist like a top, Miss.  He took his drops, and he's lying on the sofy,
+sleeping beautiful.  You can hear him breathe if you come and put your
+ear to the keyhole."
+
+"No, no," said Rich hastily; but, all the same, she walked quickly to
+the consulting-room door, and opened it softly, to look in and see
+across the table, with its chemical apparatus, the light of the shaded
+lamp thrown upon the calm, placid, handsome face, as the doctor lay back
+on the couch, taking his drug-bought rest according to his nightly
+custom.
+
+Rich sighed and walked right in, the door closing behind her as she
+crossed the room, and stood gazing down, her head bent, and handy
+clasped, while for the moment she forgot her nerve-pains, and the tears
+started to her eyes.
+
+"Poor father!" she sighed; "always so kind and gentle in spite of all.
+How do I know what he may suffer beneath the mask he wears?"
+
+She thought of the prosperity they had once enjoyed, the many patients
+who came, and how, in this very room, as a child, he used to play with
+her long curling hair, while she, with childlike delight, emptied the
+little wooden bowl, and counted how many guineas papa had received that
+morning.
+
+She recalled, too, the carriage in which she had sat waiting, while he,
+the handsome young doctor, had made his calls upon rich patients; and
+then, like a cloud, came creeping up the memories of the gradual decline
+of his practice, as he had devoted himself more and more to the dream of
+his life--this discovery of a vital fluid which should repair the waste
+of all disease, and with the indulgence in his chimera came the poverty
+and despair.
+
+"Poor father!" she sighed again, bending down and kissing the broad
+white forehead; "there has never been anything between us but love."
+
+She rose slowly, went to a corner where a faded old dressing-gown hung
+upon a chair, and this she softly laid over the sleeping man, gazed at
+the fire, which was burning brightly, and then stole away with the
+agonising pang, forgotten for the moment, sweeping back, and seeming to
+drive her mad.
+
+"I see yer a-kissing of him, Miss," said Bob, grinning, as she closed
+the door.
+
+Rich turned upon him angrily; but the boy was looking dreamily towards
+the doctor, and rubbing his shock head of hair.
+
+"Don't he look niste when he's asleep like that?  There ain't such a
+good-looking gent nowhere's about here as our master."
+
+There was so much genuine admiration in the boy's tones that the angry
+look gave place to one of half amusement, half pity.
+
+"I've often wondered whether if ever I'd had a father, he'd ha' been
+like the doctor, Miss.  Ain't yer proud on him?"
+
+"Yes, Bob, yes," she cried, laying her hand upon the boy's shoulder,
+while a strange sensation of depression, as of impending trouble, came
+over her, making her forget everything, and hardly notice the next act
+of the boy.
+
+It is hardly fair to say that Bob's hands were dirty, but they were very
+coarse in grain, and discoloured, the nails were worn down, and the
+fingers were blue with chilblains where they were not red with the chaps
+which roughened them; and those were the hands which took hold of Rich's
+and held it for a few moments against the boy's cheek; while he rubbed
+the said cheek softly against the smooth palm, his bright eyes looking
+up at her as a spaniel might at its mistress.  In fact, there was
+something dog-like and fawning in the ways of the lad, till the hand was
+drawn away.
+
+"So'm I proud on him, Miss.  He is a good 'un.  For it's like 'evin
+being here.  Why, I've been here two years now, and he never kicked me
+once."
+
+"And used you to be kicked before you came here, Bob?" said Rich,
+feeling amused, in spite of herself, at the boy's estimate of true
+happiness.
+
+"Kicked, Miss?  Ha, ha, ha!  Why, it was 'most all kicks when it warn't
+pots.  Old woman never kicked me; but when she'd had a drop, and
+couldn't get no more, she was allus cross, and then she'd hit you with
+what come first--pewter pot, poker, anything, if you didn't get out of
+the way."
+
+Rich's brow contracted, and then for the moment the pain neutralised
+that of the mind.
+
+"But she didn't often hit me," said Bob, grinning.  "I used to get too
+sharp for her; and she didn't mean no harm.  Want me to do anything,
+Miss?"
+
+"No, Bob, no," said Rich, turning away to the shelves, where the bottles
+stood as in a chemist's shop.  "Poor boy! and the place is to him like
+heaven!" she thought.
+
+"Want some physic, Miss?" said the boy excitedly; "which on 'em?  I
+knows 'most all on 'em now."
+
+"I want the belladonna," said Rich, with her face contracted once more.
+
+"Why, that's one o' they little bottles up a-top where they're all
+pisons!  Whatcher want that for?" said Bob suspiciously.  Then, as he
+read her countenance.  "Whatcher got--toothache?"
+
+Rich nodded.
+
+"Here, hold hard! you can't reach it, Miss.  Let me get on a chair.  Oh,
+I say!  Let me pull it out."
+
+The boy's eager sympathy and desire to afford relief, grotesque as it
+was, seemed so genuine, so grateful to the lonely girl, that she smiled
+at her poor coarse companion's troubled face.
+
+"No, no, Bob," she said gently.
+
+"Wish I could have it instead," he cried.  "I do, s'elp me!"
+
+"It will be better soon, Bob," she said, as the boy climbed up and
+obtained the little stoppered bottle from the top shelf.
+
+"That's good stuff for it, Miss," said the boy.  "Bottle's quite clean.
+I dusted all on 'em yesterday.  Here, I know! let me put some on."
+
+"You, Bob?" said Rich.
+
+"Yes, Miss; I know.  I've seen the doctor do it twiced to gals as come
+and wanted him to pull out their teeth, and he wouldn't.  I'll show
+yer."
+
+Bob ran to a drawer and took out a camel-hair pencil, and operated with
+it dry upon his own face.
+
+"I'll show yer," he cried.  "You begins just in front o' the ear and
+makes a round spot, and then yer goes on right down the cheek and along
+yer chin, just as if you was trying to paint whiskers.  Let me do it,
+Miss."
+
+Rich hesitated for a moment, and then sat down and held her face on one
+side, while the boy carefully painted the place with the tincture,
+frowning the while and balancing himself upon the tips of his toes.
+
+"Stop a moment, Miss," cried Bob.  "Then he dropped two drops out o'
+this here blue bottle on a bit o' glass, and finished off with it just
+as you does with gum when you paint a picture."
+
+Rich watched the boy anxiously as he took down a bottle labelled
+"Chloroform," but smiled and submitted patiently as the painting
+operation was completed.
+
+"Feel better, Miss?" said the boy.
+
+"Not yet, Bob; but I daresay this will do it good.  Now put back those
+bottles, and don't meddle with them, mind."
+
+"As if I didn't know, Miss!  Why, I'm up to all the doctor's dodges now.
+There ain't a bottle on any o' them shelves I ain't smelled; and look
+at them things in sperrits," he continued, pointing to the various
+preparations standing upon one shelf, the relics of the doctor's
+lecturing days.  "I knows 'em all by heart.  I had to fill 'em with
+fresh sperrit once."
+
+Rich turned and smiled at the boy as she reached the door; and then once
+more the young student was left alone, to go and peep through the
+keyhole to see if the doctor was fast asleep, and this being so, he ran
+to the door by the street, turned suddenly with his head on one side,
+raised his hands with the helpless, appealing gesture of the sick, and
+walked feebly to the cushioned chest, upon which he sank, with a low
+moan.
+
+It was a clever piece of acting, studied from nature, and sinking back,
+he lay for a moment or two sufficiently long for the supposed patient to
+compose himself, before he assumed another part.
+
+Leaping up, he went on tiptoe to the consulting-room again, peeped to
+see that all was right, and then, drawing himself up exactly as he had
+seen the doctor act scores of times, he slowly approached the settee,
+his face full of smiling interest, and sitting down in a chair beside
+the imaginary patient, he went through a magnificent piece of
+pantomime--so good that it was a pity there was no audience present to
+admire.  For Bob had taken the doctor's glasses from the chimney-piece,
+put them on, and bent over the patient.
+
+"Put out your tongue," he said.  "Hum--ha! yes! a little foul."
+
+Then he felt an imaginary pulse, his head on one side, and an imaginary
+watch in his hand.
+
+"That will do," he said, returning the imaginary watch to its airy fob.
+"Now sit up."
+
+Bob's ear was applied for a few moments to the phantom patient's chest.
+
+"Breathe hard.  That's it.  Now more fully.  Yes.  Now a very long
+breath."
+
+So real was the proceeding that a spectator would have filled up the
+void in his mind as Bob changed his position, holding his head now at
+the patient's back.
+
+"Hah!" he ejaculated, as he rose.  "A little congestion!  Stop a
+moment."
+
+He fetched a stethoscope from the chimney-piece, but instead of using it
+at once, proceeded to lay his hand here and there upon his imaginary
+patient's breast, and tap the back over and over again.
+
+"Hah!" he ejaculated once more, as he applied his stethoscope now after
+a most accurate pantomimic unbuttoning of vest and opening of a
+shirt-front.  "Yes, a little congestion!" he said again; and going back
+to the chimney-piece, he set the stethoscope on end as if it were a
+little fancy candlestick, took up a morocco case, and unhooking it,
+extracted therefrom a tiny thermometer, whose bulb he placed beneath his
+patient's arm-pit, and he was just about to see to what height the
+sufferer's temperature had risen, when there were steps again, and the
+boy had hardly time to hide the little tester, when the door opened,
+and, with a wild, dilated look in her eyes, Rich appeared again.
+
+"Get me a small bottle," she said hastily.
+
+"'Ain't it no better, Miss?"
+
+"Don't talk to me!" cried Rich; "the pain is maddening.  Is my father
+still asleep?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; shall I wake him?"
+
+"No, no.  The bottle--the bottle!"
+
+The boy hastily took a clean bottle from a drawer, and fitted it with a
+new cork from another, by which time, with the knowledge of one who had
+before now made up prescriptions for her father, Rich took down the
+chloral hydrate, and a graduated glass, pouring out a goodly quantity
+ready to transfer to the bottle the boy handed her, while he still
+retained the cork.
+
+This done, Rich returned the chloral hydrate to the shelf, and took down
+another bottle labelled _quin. sulph. sol_.  From this she poured out a
+certain quantity, and by the time the glass had shed its last drop, Bob
+was ready to hand another and larger bottle, which he had taken down
+with eager haste, as if fearing she would be first.
+
+Rich glanced at it, saw that it was labelled _aq. dest._, and filled up
+the medicine-bottle, the boy handing the cork, and then gazing
+sympathetically in the pain-drawn face before him.
+
+"Hadn't you better let me take it out, Miss?" he said, but there was no
+smile in answer--no reply, Rich hurrying away, while the boy listened to
+her footsteps.
+
+"Ain't she got it!" he muttered, and he stood listening still, for he
+heard voices at the end of the passage.
+
+"'Lisbeth," he said, and there was a knock.
+
+The boy opened the passage door softly, and a voice said.
+
+"I've cut you some bread and cheese; it's on the kitchen table."
+
+"Goin' to bed, 'Lisbeth?"
+
+There was a grunt, and the sound of departing steps, while the boy stood
+gazing along the passage.
+
+"So are you?" he exclaimed, closing the door, "Ain't she got a temper!
+I can't help my old woman coming.  'Tain't my fault.  I shouldn't turn
+sulky if it was hern."
+
+Bob did not go down for a moment, but stood thinking.  Then he ran out
+softly, and down-stairs into the dark kitchen to fetch his supper, which
+he preferred to eat with the fragrant odours of drugs about him, and
+seated upon the chest which contained the grisly relics of mortality,
+and against whose receptacle the boy's heels softly drummed.
+
+The stale bread and hard Dutch cheese rapidly disappeared, the boy
+looking very stolid during the process of deglutition.  Then his face
+lit up, and for a space he went through his pantomime again, seeing
+patients, pocketing their fees, dressing wounds, setting limbs, and,
+above all, prescribing a medicine which he compounded carefully, and, to
+give realism to the proceedings, himself took.
+
+It was not an objectionable medicine, being composed of small portions
+of tartaric acid and soda, dropped into a wineglass which contained so
+much water, into which had been dropped a little syrup of ginger,
+afterwards flavoured with orange or lemon.
+
+Tiring of this at last, Bob turned to the settee, whose lid he had
+opened, and he had lifted out certain anatomical specimens for his
+farther delectation, when there was a sharp ring at the surgery bell,
+and an unmistakable sound in the consulting-room--a combination which
+made the boy leap up, and, quick as lightning, turn out the gas, which
+projected on its bracket just over the settee.
+
+This done, there was a rapid click or two of bones being replaced, the
+sound of the closing lid in the darkness, and by the time the
+consulting-room door as thrown open, and a warm glow of light shone
+across the surgery, Bob had effected his retreat.
+
+"Lights out?" said the doctor going back from the door, to return
+directly with a burning spill, when the gas once more illumined the
+gloomy surgery, and to this the doctor added the ruddy glow of the
+street lamp, as he opened the door of the little fog-filled lobby, which
+intervened between him and the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+THE DOCTOR'S GUEST.
+
+As Dr Chartley's hand was placed upon the latch the bell-handle
+creaked, and the wire was sawn to and fro, while the moment the door was
+opened a man in a soft slouch hat and pea-jacket, with an ulster thrown
+over his arm, laid his hand upon the doctor's breast, thrusting him
+back, passing in quickly, and hastily closing and fastening the door.
+
+The doctor stood back more in surprise than alarm, as his visitor seemed
+to come in with a cloud of yellowish fog, which made him look indistinct
+and strange, an aspect heightened by his thick beard and moustache being
+covered with dew-like drops--the condensation of the heavy steaming
+breath that came from his nostrils as he panted hard, as one pants after
+a long run.
+
+"May I ask--is any one ill?" exclaimed the doctor, to whom the sudden
+call at any hour of an excited messenger was little matter of surprise.
+
+"In, quick!" said the visitor hoarsely; and pressing the doctor back
+once more, he stood listening for a few moments as if for pursuers, and
+then, wild-eyed and strange, he followed Dr Chartley into the surgery,
+closing the door and leaning back against it breathing heavily, his eyes
+staring wildly round, his sun-browned face twisting, while a nervous
+disposition to start and run seemed to pervade him in every gesture.
+
+The fog and smoke which came in with him added to the strangeness of his
+aspect as he stood there; his hair rather long, unkempt, and wet with
+fog; his hands gloveless, and high boots spattered with mud and soaked
+with half-molten snow.  There was more of the brigand in his aspect than
+of the honest man, and yet his drawn, agitated face was well featured
+and not unpleasing, besides which his wandering eyes suggested fear
+suffered, and not a likelihood of inspiring fear; unless it should be,
+as the doctor surmised, that he was mad, and the pursuit he evidently
+feared were that of his keepers.
+
+It formed a strange picture--the bland, smooth shining-pated doctor
+facing this wild excited man standing with his back to the door, his
+hands outspread as if to keep it fast, and his head half-turned as he
+listened for the sound of steps in the stillness of the winter night.
+
+"Will you be seated?" said the doctor blandly.  "Can I be of any
+service?"
+
+"Hush!  Can you hear anything?  There! that!" cried the newcomer, in an
+excited whisper.  "They're coming!"
+
+"Yes; mad," said the doctor to himself.  Then aloud, "The sound you hear
+is the dripping of the melting snow on the pavement."
+
+"Hah!  Are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Quite sure.  Sit down, my dear sir.  No, not here; come to my
+consulting-room.  There is a fire."
+
+The coolness of a doctor in dealing with ordinary delirium or insanity
+is in its way as heroic as the manner in which a soldier will face fire.
+To most men the advent of the strange visitor would have suggested
+calling in help or taking instant steps for self-preservations; but
+armed with weapons such as would prostrate his visitor should he prove
+inimical, the doctor calmly led the way into his consulting-room, poked
+the fire, turned up the lamp a little, and pointed to a chair, watching
+his visitor keenly the while to satisfy himself whether his behaviour
+was the result of fever, drink, or an unbalanced brain.
+
+The man glared at the doctor for a moment, stepped quickly to the room
+door, opened it, listened, drew back again, closed it, and slipped the
+bolt on the inside.
+
+Science-armed as he was, however, the doctor displayed no sign of
+trepidation, but sat down, waiting till his visitor came quickly back,
+threw his ulster over the back of the chair set for him, sank into it
+with a groan, dropped his face into his hands, and burst into a
+hysterical fit of sobbing.
+
+"Hah!" said the doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon the young man's
+shoulder.  "You seem overwrought, and--"
+
+The stranger started back at the touch, and was about to spring up, a
+cry of fear escaping his lips; and his slouched hat fell off, showing
+his wet brow, with the tangled hair clinging to it in a matted mass.
+
+"I thought--" he gasped.  "Ah, doctor, it is you!"
+
+"Yes, sir; sit down and let's see.  You seem quite exhausted."
+
+"Don't you know me, doctor?"
+
+"Know you?  Good heavens!" cried the doctor in astonishment.  "Mark
+Heath?"
+
+"Mark Heath," said the visitor, sinking back with a groan.
+
+"We thought you must be dead," said the doctor.
+
+"You thought I must be dead," said the young man, passing his hand over
+his brow, and speaking in a strange and laboured way.  "Yes, and I
+thought I must be dead--a dozen times over.  I'm half dead now.  What's
+that?"
+
+He almost yelled the last words as he started to his feet again, his
+eyes wild, his right hand clinched, and his left thrust into the breast,
+as if in search of a weapon.
+
+"I heard nothing," said the doctor.  "Sit down."
+
+"Some one in the street trying to get in."
+
+"No, no, no.  Sit down, my dear boy.  Come, come: what's the matter?"
+
+"Are you sure you cannot hear any one?"
+
+"Quite, and even if I could, no one could get in without I opened the
+door."
+
+"Hah!" ejaculated the young man, sinking down; "brandy! for God's sake,
+brandy!"
+
+The doctor looked at him, hesitated, and ended by laying his hand upon
+his visitor's pulse, as he sat gazing strangely at the door.
+
+If the doctor's soft touch had been that of white-hot iron the effect
+could not have been greater, for with a smothered shriek the young man
+sprang from his chair and stood at bay by the door.
+
+"Why, Mark Heath, my good fellow, this will not do," said the doctor
+blandly.  "There, there, come and sit down.  I was only feeling your
+pulse."
+
+A faint smile came over the young man's face, and he walked back to his
+chair.
+
+"I thought it was one of those fiends," he said, with a shudder.
+
+The doctor coupled the admission with the mention of the brandy, but he
+was not satisfied as to the symptoms, though, seeing his visitor's
+exhaustion, he went to his closet and took out a spirit decanter, with
+tumblers, poured a little into one glass, and was about to add water to
+it from the little bright kettle singing on the hob, when the young man
+snatched at the glass, and tossed off the brandy at a gulp; but even as
+he was in the act of setting down the glass, he started and stared
+wildly round towards the door.
+
+"Hist!" he whispered.
+
+"Pooh! there is nothing, my dear sir," said the doctor: "why, any one
+would think you were being hunted by the police."
+
+"Hunted?  Yes," cried the young man thrusting the glass from him, and
+leaning across and seizing the doctor's wrist, "hunted--always hunted;
+but there were no police, doctor; why were they not near to protect me?"
+
+"Ah, yes," said the doctor, to humour his patient, as with keen interest
+he watched every change in his mien.  "They are generally absent when
+wanted.  So you have been hunted, eh?"
+
+"Hunted!  Yes; like some miserable hare by the hounds.  They are on my
+scent now.  Night and day, doctor, night and day, till they have nearly
+driven me mad."
+
+"Mad?  Nonsense!  Your brain is as sound as mine."
+
+"Yes, now; but they will drive me mad.  Night and day, I tell you--night
+and day, I have not dared to sleep," continued the young man wildly;
+"no, I have not dared to sleep, for fear that I should not wake again."
+
+"Indeed, Heath!  And who hunted you?"
+
+"Fiends--demons in human form.  I have been so that I could not sleep
+for fear of them.  They have always been on my track--on the road
+through the desert, across the mountains, at the port, on shipboard;
+they appeared again here in England, at the docks, at the hotel, in the
+streets; hunted, I tell you, till I have seemed to be hunted to death."
+
+"Be calm, my dear boy, be calm.  Come, you must have sleep."
+
+"Sleep?  Yes, if I could only sleep; but no, I could not--I could not--
+only drink, doctor, drink; and it has never made me drunk, only keep me
+up--help me to escape from the devils."
+
+"Ah, you have drunk a good deal, then?"
+
+"Yes; brandy--brandy.  It has been my only friend and support, doctor.
+I dared not go to an hotel; I was afraid to trust a bank; I had no
+friend to whom I could go; and I swore I would trust myself till I could
+get here safe in England."
+
+"Where you are safe now."
+
+"No, not yet, for they are tracking me.  I got to Liverpool yesterday,
+and tried to throw them off; but they followed me to the hotel, and I
+dared trust no one there.  They might have said I was mad, and claimed
+me; said I was a thief--a dozen things to get me into their hands."
+
+"Be calm, Heath, be calm."
+
+"Calm?  How can a hunted man be calm with the jaws--the wet, hungry
+jaws--of the hounds on his heels--while he feels that in a moment they
+may spring upon him and rend him?  Oh, doctor, doctor, you never were a
+hunted man."
+
+"No, no," said the doctor blandly; "but we must master ourselves when we
+feel that excitement leading us astray."
+
+"Ay, and I have mastered myself till I can do no more," cried the young
+man wildly; "I escaped from Liverpool."
+
+"Escaped?"
+
+"Yes, and managed to get to the train, as I thought, unseen; but at the
+first stopping station I saw the demons pass my carriage and look in.
+They had changed their dress, and disguised themselves, but I knew them
+at once, and that my attempts were vain.  It was growing dark when we
+reached London, and when they took the tickets I waited till the train
+went on again, and then leaped for my life."
+
+"You leaped from the train?"
+
+"Yes.  I wonder I did not when it was at full speed, faraway in the
+country."
+
+"Hah!" ejaculated the doctor.
+
+"I leaped from the train; but they were watching me, and they followed
+down the embankment and into a maze of little streets in North London
+yonder, where the fog and snow bewildered me; but I kept on all the
+evening, fearing to ask help of the police, dreading to go to an hotel
+for dinner.  The dread, the want of sleep, have made me nearly mad.  I
+did not know where to go, and at last, after struggling wildly to
+escape, I knew that my brain was going, that before long the dogs would
+drag me down.  Then in my despair I thought of you."
+
+"And came here?"
+
+"Yes, for sanctuary, doctor.  Save me from these devils--save me from
+myself.  Doctor, is this to be the end of it all?  I am alone--helpless:
+they may be listening even now.  Doctor, for God's sake save me; I can
+do no more!"
+
+Trembling in every limb, wildly excited, and with his despair written in
+every lineament of his face, Mark Heath dropped from his chair, and
+crept upon his knees before the doctor, holding up his clasped hands,
+and evidently so completely exhausted that he might have been mastered
+by a child.
+
+"Yes, yes; of course, of course I will," said the doctor kindly.
+"There, come and lie down here on this couch."
+
+"Lie down?" said the young man, with a suspicious look.
+
+"To be sure; it will rest you.  You are quite safe here."
+
+"Safe?  Am I safe?"
+
+"Of course," said the doctor, spreading the fallen ulster over the young
+man's shivering form, as he slowly lay down.
+
+"Stop! where are you going?"
+
+"Only into the next room--the surgery," said the doctor, turning to face
+his visitor's fierce eyes as he started up from the couch.
+
+"What for?  Is it to admit those devils."
+
+Mark Heath, in a fit of impotent rage, made a dash to reach the
+fireplace, but his feet were hampered by the ulster, and he would have
+fallen heavily had not the doctor caught him in his arms.
+
+"Why, man," he said, "I was going to get you something to take--
+something to calm you.  It is impossible for you to go on like this."
+
+The young man looked at him wildly.
+
+"I can't help it," he said, calming down.  "I have been hunted till I am
+afraid of everybody.  Save me, doctor, for you can."
+
+"Lie down, then; there: that's better."
+
+"Yes.  I am so helpless and so weak," the poor fellow moaned.  "The
+brandy kept me up, but it makes me wild."
+
+"Then you shall have something that will calm you, and not make you
+wild," said the doctor; and he went out of the room, leaving his visitor
+lying down with his eyes closed.
+
+But the moment he was alone, Mark Heath started up on one arm,
+listening, and thrust his hand into his breast.  He was listening for
+the unlocking of a door; but he heard the chink of a glass and the faint
+gurgle of some fluid, and he sank back with a sigh of relief.
+
+"Rich--my darling," he said softly; "it is for you, sweet--for you!"
+
+"There," said the doctor, re-entering with a glass; "drink that, and you
+must have some sleep.  We shall soon get you right."
+
+"Heaven bless you, doctor!" cried the young man, hysterically pressing
+his hand after draining the glass.  "I feel in sanctuary here.  Ah," he
+sighed, as he sank back, "to be at rest once more, and safe!  Doctor,
+you must guard over me and what I have here."
+
+"Oh, yes," said the doctor, sitting down after replenishing the fire.
+"Did you have a rough passage back?"
+
+"I don't know--I know nothing but that those fiends were after me to get
+it, and I knew that they would kill me if they could only get a chance.
+A heated hare sees nothing but the hounds."
+
+"No, of course not," said the doctor, speaking softly to keep his
+patient's attention, but watching him intently the while, to see the
+effect of his medicine.  "Let's see, you have been away four years."
+
+"Yes, four years," said Mark, speaking more calmly now.  "Lost every
+penny, farming, doctor.  No good."
+
+"I am sorry to hear that."
+
+"Then I tried--wagon-driving, and made a respectable living--doing
+regular carter's work till I had a team and wagon of my own; but I went
+one bad time--right across the desert, and found myself at last--seated
+on the last bullock of my team of twenty--by the wreck of my wagon--
+doctor dying--for want of water."
+
+"Ah! that was bad."
+
+"Yes, but I was picked up by a party who came in the nick of time.  They
+were going by across journey to the diamond-fields."
+
+"Ah! you went there?"
+
+"Yes, I went there," said the young man drowsily, and speaking in a
+restful manner and with many pauses.  "Rough life, and for six months--
+no good.  Then luck turned.  I went on.  At last found--self rich man.
+Rather absurd, doctor--handful of stones--stones, crystals--handful in a
+leather bag.  Soon nothing.  I often laughed.  Seemed so much trash, but
+the right thing.  Very large some of them, and I worked on--digging--and
+picking.  Knew I was a wealthy man."
+
+"You were very fortunate, then?"
+
+"Yes," was the drowsy reply.  "Then began the curse of it.  Couldn't
+keep it--secret.  Found out that it was dangerous.  Ought to have
+banked, but they were--were so hard to get.  'Fraid of everybody.
+Felt--felt should be murdered.  Nearly drove--drove me wild.  Made
+secret--secret plans--escape--get home--old England.  To bring--to
+bring--bag of diamonds--leather bag--worth a deal--bring home myself.
+Followed--followed me.  Three men--part of gang out there--gamble and
+cheat men--at play.  Always--always--on my track--hunted--at bay--sea--
+always watching--like tigers--Ah!"
+
+He sprang up from his drowsy muttering state, in which he had been
+incoherently piercing together his imaginary or real adventures, and
+gazed wildly round.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"It is only I--Doctor Chartley.  Lie down again."
+
+"I thought they'd come, and I--I was telling them.  Bag of diamonds.
+No.  Nonsense!  All rubbish!  Poor man.  Going home.  'Nough to pay his
+passage.  All nonsense.  No diamonds; no nothing."
+
+He had sunk back once more, and went on muttering as he dropped asleep.
+
+The doctor sat watching him, and then rose and tapped the fire together,
+picking up a few fresh pieces of coal to augment the blaze, which seemed
+to send some of the fog out of the room.
+
+"Wild dissipation--gambling with Nature for treasure," said the doctor
+softly.  "Imagination, poor wretch!"
+
+The doctor bent down over his patient, who was now sleeping deeply, but
+had tossed the ulster aside, so that it was gliding down.
+
+"Curious, this wild delirium," said the doctor, rearranging the
+improvised cover.  "I often wonder that I have not made it a study and--
+Good heavens!"
+
+He started back from the couch, and stood staring at his patient for a
+few minutes before advancing again, and laying his hand upon his breast
+gently, and then thrusting it beneath the fold of the thick pea-jacket.
+
+"It is not delirium; they--"
+
+The doctor hesitated a few moments after drawing back from the couch
+once more.  Then, with his whole manner changed, he thrust his hand into
+the sleeping man's breast, glanced round, and, satisfied that he was not
+overlooked, drew forth a good-sized wash-leather bag, simply tied round
+the neck with a strip of the same skin.
+
+"Stones," muttered the doctor, with his face agitated and his eyes
+glittering; and after balancing the bag in his hand and glancing at the
+sleeping man, he placed it upon the table, where the light of the lamp
+was upon it full.
+
+Then ensued a period of hesitation, the doctor's fingers worked as he
+stood gazing down at the little yellowish-drab bag, and anon at his
+patient.
+
+Then the newly awakened curiosity prevailed, and, unable to contain
+himself, he rapidly untied the string, drew open the bag, and saw that
+it was nearly full of large rough crystals, which sparkled in a feeble
+way in the light.
+
+"Why, they must be worth a large sum," muttered the doctor, pouring out
+some of the stones into his hand, but pouring them back with a shudder.
+"How horrible!"
+
+He did not say what was horrible, but hastily retied the bag and placed
+it back in the sleeping man's breast, before hurrying out into the
+surgery, and pacing to and fro in an agitated way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+THE STRANGE ACCIDENT.
+
+A change seemed to have come over Doctor Chartley.  A short time before
+he was calm and placid, his movements were slow, and a pleasant
+stereotyped professional smile made his handsome face beam.  But now all
+was changed; the smile had gone, and, as he had passed to and fro, the
+light from the gas bracket displayed a countenance puckered with curious
+lines and frowns, while the variations of shadow caused by his
+constantly-changing position seemed to have altered him into another
+man.
+
+He went back into the consulting-room, and looked at his patient, to
+find him breathing more easily and plunged into a deep sleep; and as he
+bent over him his hand stole toward the prostrate man's breast.
+
+He snatched it away angrily, and returned to the surgery, to resume his
+hurried walk, muttering to himself, his thoughts finding utterance in
+sound, till he started and looked about him, as if in dread of being
+overheard.
+
+Stealing back to the consulting-room, he went to the closet, and took
+out the bottle which contained the result of his studies, and looked at
+it with a sigh.  Then he raised the retort and its stand from the shelf,
+shook his head, and replaced it.
+
+"And if I only had money," he thought, "I could carry out my experiments
+at my ease, and succeed.  This miserable poverty would be no more; my
+children would be happy; and I should win a name which would become
+immortal."
+
+He shook his head, his brow grew darker, and a terrible temptation
+attacked him.
+
+"No one saw him come here.  It is his fancy that he has been followed.
+One life.  What is one life in this vast world?  One life.  Why, my
+discovery perfected would be the saving of the lives of thousands,
+hundreds of thousands, of generations of human beings in this teeming
+earth.  Suppose he slept and waked no more?  Ah!"
+
+The doctor stood gazing down at the sleeping man.
+
+"Such temptations come to all," he said softly; "and I have seen so many
+die that the passing away of one--well, what is it but the deep long
+sleep into which I could make him glide without pain?
+
+"Ah, and afterwards?  Poor lad!  He came to me for sanctuary, and I had
+betrayed my trust.  How could I look in the face of my son again--in the
+eye of my girl?  Those clear eyes would read my secret, and I should be
+as one accurst."
+
+He bent down over the sleeping man again, and in spite of himself his
+hand stole gently towards his heart, trembling.
+
+"They are worth thousands," he said, "and they lie there as if of the
+value of a few pence.  He came to me for refuge.  Well, he shall not
+find that I have failed."
+
+There was no tremor in his hand now as he re-arranged the cover over
+Mark Heath's breast, to stand afterwards calmly watching his guest; and
+then to go out into the surgery, turn down the gas, and slowly pace the
+floor, thinking deeply.
+
+Every inch of the surgery was so familiar that the darkness was the same
+to him as the light, and the bitter coldness of the place seemed to
+refresh him.
+
+At the end of a few minutes he stood perfectly still, thinking; and then
+going to one of the shelves, he ran his hand softly along the top row of
+small bottles, took one, and turned down the gas.
+
+As he entered the consulting-room again, he glanced at the label, nodded
+his head in a satisfied manner, and after a glance at his patient he
+seemed to make up his mind what to do.
+
+"Perhaps I shall sleep," he thought, "and if I do he may wake.  It will
+be a simple way."
+
+He smiled as he took the glass into which he had previously poured the
+brandy, and poured in a little more, to which he added sugar, and
+half-filled the glass with hot water from the kettle.
+
+"He will be sure to drink that," he said, as he replaced the glass
+within easy reach of the sofa; and then removing the stopper from the
+blue bottle he held, replaced it partly in the neck, rested it upon the
+edge of the steaming glass, and began to count the drops which fell.
+
+One--two--three.
+
+Each drop at an interval after the one which had preceded it, while with
+his left hand he steadied the tumbler.
+
+As the third drop fell into the glass there was a strange noise
+outside--a dull scuffling of feet, mutterings of voices, and then a low
+imperious tapping on the panel of the door.
+
+At the first sound the doctor turned his head sharply and gazed in the
+direction of the door, while the rest of his body seemed to have become
+fixed in a cataleptic state, save that his eyes dilated and his jaw
+dropped.
+
+And meanwhile, slowly and steadily, drip--drip--drip--drip, the globules
+of fluid fell from the tip of the blue bottle into the steaming glass at
+last in quite a stream.
+
+A strange dread had overcome the doctor.  His patient's words about his
+diamonds had proved to be true; were the rest, then, true--that he had
+been pursued by men whose aim it was to plunder, perhaps murder him, and
+they had really traced him down here?
+
+"Bah! am I turning childish?" said the doctor, starting up, and letting
+the stopper fall back into its place in the bottle, just as his patient
+moaned slightly, turned impatiently in his sleep, and the ulster glided
+to the floor.
+
+The doctor stooped quickly, raised it, and threw it over his patient,
+and, as he bent over him, listened intently to the repetition of the
+tapping.
+
+"It might be," he said softly.  "Pish! absurd!  The wanderings of a
+diseased mind."
+
+Catching up the bottle from where he had placed it on the table, he
+walked quickly towards the door, paused, returned, and stooped as if to
+pick up the poker.  Then smiled at his folly.
+
+He passed softly out of the door, and closed it after him, to go to the
+shelves in the dark, where he made a clicking noise among the bottles,
+as he reached up; for there in the darkness the feeling once more
+assailed him that his patient might be right, while for the third time,
+more plainly heard now, there came a sharp tapping.
+
+The doctor crossed to the gas bracket, turned it up, and as its light
+filled the surgery, he walked boldly to the lobby-door, opened it, and
+the dull red glare from the fanlight over the outer door shone upon his
+handsome placid face.
+
+The next moment he had opened the outer door, and was gazing at a group
+of three men.
+
+Mark Heath's announcement flashed through his brain once more, and then
+gave place to the ideas furnished by his visitors.
+
+"Thought you were a-bed.  Couldn't find the bell.  This cursed fog, sir.
+Our friend here knocked down by a cab, and we saw your red light as we
+were trying to get him to our hotel."
+
+"Tut, tut, tut!" ejaculated the doctor.  "Bring him in, gentlemen."
+
+He glanced at his visitors.  Saw that they were well-dressed men in
+ulsters and low-crowned hats, and that the speaker was a well-built
+fellow with a closely-cut beard; while another was a rather
+Mephistophelean-looking man, with cheeks closely shaven, and upper lip
+bearing a bristly moustache.
+
+Between them they supported a slight, young-looking companion, who was
+moaning slightly, but evidently making an effort to be firm.
+
+"Mind, Harry--Rogers," he said, in a high-pitched voice, "it's as if
+something red-hot was running through my chest!  Ah-h-h!"
+
+"Support him, gentlemen," said the doctor.  "Mind he doesn't faint.
+Here, quick!  Here!"
+
+He spoke in sharp, decided tones, as he directed and helped them to lay
+the injured man upon the settee, where he subsided with a querulous cry,
+grinding his teeth the while, and compressing his lips.
+
+"Kindly shut both doors," said the doctor; and the man who had first
+spoken, and who looked very pale, obeyed.
+
+"So cursedly unlucky!" he said excitedly.  "I never saw such a fog.
+They've no business to allow men to drive fast on a night like this."
+
+"Don't talk, old chap.  Not serious, I hope, doctor?" said the
+Mephistophelean man.  "Cab seemed to come out of the fog, and he was
+knocked down.  I got an ugly blow on the shoulder."
+
+"Get me some brandy," said the injured man faintly.  "My chest's
+crushed."
+
+"No, no, not so bad as that," said the doctor kindly.  "You shall have a
+stimulus soon.  Now, then, suppose we see what the damage is.  A broken
+rib, I expect, and that will only mean a little pain.  Now, then."
+
+His busy fingers were rapidly and tenderly unbuttoning the injured man's
+coat, while a gasping moan came from his lips.
+
+"Hurts me horribly--to breathe, doctor."
+
+There was a gasping sound, and the Mephistophelean man reeled, tried to
+save himself, and fell against the consulting-room door, which somehow
+flew open, revealing the sleeping figure of Mark Heath on the couch.
+
+"My dear sir--faint?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, doctor," said the sinister-looking man.  "Sick as a
+great girl.  I can bear pain, but to see him like that turned me over.
+No, no, see to him; I'm better now."
+
+The doctor continued his task, while the door swung to once more.
+
+"Still feel faint?" said the doctor, without looking up.
+
+"Oh, no; it's all gone now.  I really am ashamed."
+
+"Nothing to be ashamed of, my dear sir.  It is a man's nature.  Now I
+shall be obliged to ask one of you to lend me a little assistance here."
+
+The bearded man stood ready, and exchanged a glance with his
+Mephistophelean companion, who was behind the doctor now.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Dr Chartley uttered a quick ejaculation, for, as he bent over his
+patient, the man behind struck him a heavy blow with a short thick
+life-preserver, and, quick almost as lightning, delivered another
+crashing stroke on the back of the head.
+
+Without so much as a groan, merely a catching at the air, the doctor
+fell forward upon his supposed patient, and then rolled with a dull
+heavy sound upon the carpet, to lie motionless--to all appearance dead.
+
+"Yah! what a butcher you are, Rogers!" said the sham patient, in a
+querulous high-pitched tone.
+
+"Hold your row!  Quick!  Listen at that door."
+
+The sham patient sprang to the door at the end of the passage, opened it
+softly, and stood listening.
+
+"All right," he whispered, "still as death."
+
+"Curse you! hold your row about death," whispered the other as the door
+was closed.  "Lock it."
+
+"I was going to," said the younger man, turning the key softly.  "Is he
+there, Harry?"
+
+"Yes; all right," came in a whisper from the bearded man, who had softly
+opened the consulting-room door and peered in at the sleeping figure
+upon the couch.  "Quick! come on."
+
+The man addressed as Rogers had stooped down and then gone on one knee,
+thrusting the life-preserver into his pocket while he examined the
+doctor, and not noticing that it slipped out onto the skirt of his coat,
+and rolled aside as he finished his examination, and satisfied himself
+that there was nothing to be apprehended there.
+
+He started up, and followed his companion on tiptoe, and the next minute
+they were gazing down at the man they had tracked from the
+diamond-fields and run to earth at last.
+
+"Hah!" exclaimed the Mephistopheles of the party; "that's right.  Give
+him one if he moves."
+
+This to his bearded companion, who had drawn a life-preserver similar to
+that his companion had used, as he bent over the sleeping man.
+
+"He has had a dose," was whispered back.  "You can smell his breath."
+
+"Brandy.  All right!" cried the youngest of the three, catching up the
+decanter, smelling it, tasting it with a loud smack of the lips, and
+pouring out a goodly portion in the empty glass, he handed it to his
+first companion.  "Here, Harry."
+
+"Sure it's all right?" was whispered back.
+
+"Swear it.  Now, Rogers."
+
+"Here's mine," said the man, with a grin.  "Hot with.  Quick, lads!"
+
+"Don't touch that," was on the younger man's lips; but his companion
+raised the glass with a laugh, and as he followed his example by putting
+the decanter to his mouth, the doctor's assailant literally poured the
+contents of the tumbler down his throat, and then stood still, put the
+glass back on the table, gasping and staring straight before him.
+
+His companions were not heeding him, for each drank eagerly of the
+brandy, and were setting down the decanter and glass, when the younger
+man spoke:
+
+"Why, Rogers, old chap!"
+
+The man addressed turned his wild staring eyes at him for a moment, as
+if to answer, and then walked blindly between the sofa and the table, as
+if to go straight to the wall, reeled and fell, catching at the cloth,
+which he dragged aside, nearly causing the lamp to go crashing on the
+floor.
+
+For a few moments the others stood aghast, staring at their prostrate
+companion, who writhed slightly for a brief period, uttering a curious
+sound, and then lay upon his back, stretched out motionless.
+
+The younger man was the first to recover himself.
+
+"Help!" he gasped, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"Hush!" cried his companion; "are you mad?"
+
+He raised his life-preserver threateningly, and the other gazed at him
+with ghastly face and staring eyes.
+
+"What shall we do?" he whispered.
+
+"Keep your head, and don't be a fool," was the reply.
+
+As the bearded man spoke he went down on one knee, thrust his hand into
+his comrade's breast, and then rose quickly.
+
+"What is it, Harry--poison?"
+
+"Yes, grim death, lad."
+
+"Then, we've got it, too."
+
+"No--all right.  The fool!  Smell that glass."
+
+He took up and held the tumbler to his nose, and then passed it to his
+companion, who smelt it, and put it down with a shudder.
+
+"Come on," he panted; "let's get away."
+
+"Without the diamonds--now?"
+
+"I'm no use," groaned the younger man.
+
+"Hold up, curse you!  It's fortune of war.  One man down.  Prize-money
+to divide between two instead of three."
+
+"Hah!" ejaculated the other, upon whom his comrade's words acted like
+magic.  "I'm all sight, now.  Quick! let's have 'em!"
+
+The elder man had already thrust his hand into Mark's breast.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"All right."
+
+"Are they there?"
+
+"Yes; safe enough."
+
+"Get 'em out, then, and let's go.  Curse it!  Look at old Roger's eyes."
+
+There was a dull heavy sound of a door banged, and the two men started
+up in an agony of dread that the spoil for which they had toiled so
+patiently and long, never getting it within their clutch till now, was
+about to be snatched away.
+
+It was a door that had been banged, and in their ignorance of the
+configuration of the place they did not realise that it was in the next
+house.
+
+"Keep your head," said the elder man.
+
+"Right.  I'm cool enough," was the reply.  "Quick! get 'em out, and
+let's go!"
+
+"It would take half an hour to get at them.  He has a belt buckled round
+his waist under everything, and there'll be stones sewn into his clothes
+all over."
+
+"Curse it all!"
+
+"Hush!  Quick!  Take hold of that ulster, and there's his hat."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"We've got him.  He's drugged, and we can do what we like."
+
+"What! bring him away?"
+
+"Yes.  Quick! take hold of that arm!"
+
+"But if he wakes?"
+
+"Send him to sleep, as we did the doctor.  Now, held your row, do as I
+do, and keep your head."
+
+The younger man obeyed, and catching Mark Heath's arm, as his companion
+had done on the other side, they placed his hat upon his head, and in a
+half-conscious way he made an effort to walk, so that they had no
+difficulty in getting him into the surgery.
+
+"Now, then, button-up.  I'll hold him," said the elder man.
+
+"But when we get him in the street?" whispered the other.
+
+"Well--what?  He's drunk.  We'll get him in a cab.  No one will
+interfere.  Leave it to me, and back me up.  Quick! shut that door; and
+then turn on the light."
+
+The orders were obeyed; and as soon as they stood in the darkness the
+lobby-door was opened, where the red light gave them sufficient
+illumination to finish their proceedings.
+
+Another minute, and, their victim's arm well gripped on either side, the
+elder man said hoarsely, "Ready?"
+
+"Yes; but are you sure that he had the stuff on him?"
+
+"Trust me for that.  Now, be cool, and the diamonds are ours.  Off!"
+
+The outer door was opened, and with very little difficulty Mark Heath
+was half-lifted, half-led outside, in an inert, helpless condition, his
+brain steeped in sleep, and his mind a blank.  Then the two men stood in
+the snow, listening for a sound within the house.
+
+It was the elder who spoke then:
+
+"Get your arm well under him.  Hold hard!  Shut the door.  Mind he don't
+slip down.  It's dark as pitch.  Now, then, come on."
+
+At that moment John Whyley turned on his lamp.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+"AY, MARRY IS'T; CROWNER'S QUEST LAW."
+
+A jury of men, chosen with the careful selection always made by the
+coroner's officer, and with such extraordinary happy results, sat
+solemnly and listened to the evidence, after hearing the coroner's
+preliminary address, and viewing the body of the deceased.
+
+Witness by witness, all were examined.  John Whyley told all he knew,
+and produced the life-preserver; Richmond Chartley, brought from her
+father's bedside, where he lay perfectly insensible, gave her account of
+the proceedings, and directly after joined Janet Heath, who was her
+companion, and sat down to try once more to disentangle her thoughts,
+which, from the time she had left the surgery with the bottle of chloral
+till she was alarmed by the persistent ringing of the doctor's
+night-bell, had been in a state of wild confusion.
+
+Hendon Chartley gave his evidence.  How he had been spending the evening
+with a gentleman of his acquaintance, and on letting himself in with his
+latch-key he had heard voices in the surgery, and gone there.
+
+Mr James Poynter, the gentleman with whom Hendon Chartley had been
+dining corroborated the last witness, and seemed disgusted that he had
+not a better part to play, especially after his announcement to the
+coroner that he was a great friend of the family.
+
+For some reason of their own, the sapient jurymen exchanged glances
+several times during the evidence of the last two witnesses, and shook
+their heads, while one man began to make notes on the sheet of paper
+before him with a very scratchy pen, whereupon two more immediately
+caught the complaint, and the foreman regretted to himself that he
+wasn't as handy with ink as he could wish.
+
+The surgeon was of course a very important witness, and he told how the
+man upon whose body the inquest was being held had undoubtedly died of
+an excessive dose of hydrocyanic acid, of which poison there was,
+naturally enough, a bottle in the doctor's surgery; but how it had been
+administered, whether by accident, purposely, or with suicidal intent,
+it was impossible to say; and apparently the only man who could throw
+any light upon the subject was Doctor Chartley himself, who was now
+lying in a precarious state, perfectly insensible from the pressure of
+bone upon the brain, and too feeble for an operation to be performed.
+
+"Not the only man," said one of the jury; "three men were seen by the
+policeman to leave the surgery."
+
+The coroner said "Exactly;" and there was a murmur of assent; while,
+after stating that it was impossible to say how long Dr Chartley would
+be before he could appear, and that it was quite possible that he would
+never be able to give evidence at all, the surgeon's evidence came to an
+end.
+
+Elizabeth Gundry was called; and a frightened-looking smudgy woman came
+forward, trembling and fighting hard not to burst into tears, hysterical
+sobbing having filled up so much of her time since the foggy night that
+her voice had degenerated into an appealing whine.  She was
+smudgy-looking, but undoubtedly clean; only life in underground
+kitchens, and the ingraining of London blacks with the baking process of
+cookery, had given her skin an unwholesome tinge, which her reddened
+eyes did not improve.
+
+Questioned, she knew nothing but that she thought she had heard the
+doctor's bell ring; but that she always put her head under the clothes
+if she did hear it, and she did so that night.  Further questioned why,
+she said with sobs that it was a very large house, and nobody was kept
+but her and Bob; and she was "that tired when she went to bed that she
+thought it weren't fair to expect her to get up and answer the
+night-bell, and so she never would hear it if it rang.  It warn't her
+place; for though she did housemaid's work, and there was two sets of
+front-doorsteps, she considered herself a cook."
+
+Here there was a furious burst of sobbing, and the foreman of the jury
+wanted to know why.
+
+Now he, being a pleasant-looking man, won upon Elizabeth Gundry more
+than the coroner did, that gentleman being suggestive of an extremely
+sharp ratting terrier grown fat.  So Elizabeth informed the foreman that
+her grief was, of course, partly on account of master, and she thought
+it very shocking for there to be a murder in "our house;" but what she
+wanted to know was what had become of Bob, whom she was sure one of
+those bad men had smuggled away under his coat.
+
+Of course, this brought Bob to the front, and, growing garrulous now,
+Elizabeth informed everybody that Bob was a regular limb, but evidently
+a favourite; and since Bob had answered her out of the surgery regarding
+his supper, Bob had not been seen or heard of, and it was her opinion
+that he had been killed, so as not to tell all he knew.
+
+Bob's bed had not been slept in; Bob's hat was hanging in the pantry,
+and the police had not been able to discover where Bob had gone.
+
+The mystery seemed to thicken, and Elizabeth was questioned till she
+broke down sobbing once more, after declaring that Bob was the
+mischievousest young imp as ever lived, but she was very fond of him;
+and if it hadn't been for his wicked old tipsy mother, who was no better
+than a thief, there weren't a dearer, more lovable boy in the "old
+world."
+
+The sergeant of police and John Whyley made notes, afterwards compared,
+about Bob and his mother, and Elizabeth went off crying and refusing to
+be comforted because of Bob.
+
+Then the sergeant stated perspiringly in the hot room, buttoned up in
+his coat, that the cabman had been found; and in due course a red-nosed,
+prominent-eyed member of the four-wheeled fraternity corroborated John
+Whyley's evidence as to the three men whom he took in his cab.  He
+reiterated the statement that "one on 'em was very tight;" told that he
+drove them to an hotel in Surrey Street, close to the Embankment, and
+corrected himself as to the driving, because "You see, gents, it was
+like this here: the fog was that thick, if you sat on the box you
+couldn't see the 'oss's tail, let alone his ears, and you had to lead
+him all the way."
+
+Did the men go into the hotel?
+
+He couldn't say; they helped out the one as was so very tight, and they
+gave him arf-suffrin--first money he'd took that night, and the last, on
+account of the fog.
+
+And where did the three men go--into the hotel?
+
+He didn't know; they seemed to him to go into the fog.  Everythink went
+into the fog that night or come out on it.  It was all fog as you might
+'most ha' cut with a knife; and when he had a wash next morning, his
+face was that black with the sut you might ha' took him for a sweep.
+
+But the man who seemed to be drunk, did he say anything?
+
+Not a word.
+
+"Would he know the men again?"
+
+Not likely; and besides, if he took notice of all parties as was very
+tight, and as he took home in his keb, he'd have enough to do.  That
+there fog was so thick that--
+
+The coroner said that would do, and after the people at the hotel had
+been called to prove that no one had entered their place after eleven
+o'clock that night, and that the bell had not been rung, the coroner
+said that the case would have for the present to be left in the hands of
+the police, who would, he hoped, elucidate what was at present one of
+the mysteries of our great city.  He did not think he was justified in
+starting a theory of his own as to the causes of the dramatic scene that
+must have taken place in Dr Chartley's surgery.  They were met to
+investigate the causes of the death of this man, who was at present
+unknown.  No doubt the police would be able to trace the three men who
+left the surgery that night, and during the adjournment Dr Chartley
+would probably recover; and so on, and so on; a long harangue in which
+it seemed as if the fog, of which so much mention had been made, had got
+into the evidence.
+
+Finally the coroner said that he did not think he should be doing his
+duty if he did not mark the feeling he had with respect to the conduct
+of the police-constable John Whyley.
+
+The gentleman in question glowed, for he felt that he had suddenly
+become a prominent personage, with chevrons upon his arm to denote his
+rise in rank.  Then he froze, and his face assumed a terribly blank
+expression, for the coroner went on to say that never in the whole
+course of his experience, which now extended over a quarter of a
+century, had he been cognisant of such utterly crass stupidity as that
+of this policeman--a man who, in his opinion, ought to be dismissed from
+the force.
+
+John Whyley wished a wicked wish after the jury had been dismissed, and
+orders given for the burial of the Mephistophelean-looking man, lying so
+stiff and ghastly in the parish shell--and John Whyley's wish was that
+it had been the coroner instead of Doctor Chartley who had got "that
+one--two on the nob."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+MR POYNTER POLISHES HIS HAT.
+
+James Poynter rang four times at Dr Chartley's door-bell, and rapped as
+many at the great grinning knocker tied in flannel, before he heard the
+chain put up and the lock shot back, to display the smudgy unwholesome
+countenance of Elizabeth Gundry, who always blinked like a night-bird
+when forced to leave her dark kitchen.
+
+"There, hang it, woman, open the door!" cried Poynter.  "Do you take me
+for a thief?"
+
+"No, sir, I didn't know it was you; but I am so scared, sir, and they
+ain't found Bob yet."
+
+Elizabeth did not hear what James Poynter said about Bob, for she closed
+the door, took down the chain, opened slowly and grudgingly, and the
+visitor entered.
+
+"How's the doctor?"
+
+"Awful, please, sir, just; he's there with his eyes shut, as if he was
+going to die, and Miss Rich and Miss Janet taking it in turns to sit up
+night and day."
+
+"Ask Miss Chartley to come down and see me."
+
+"Which, please, sir, she said as she couldn't see nobody now."
+
+"You go and do as I tell you."
+
+"Which it ain't my place, sir, to answer the front-door-bell at all.
+Poor Bob!"
+
+She ended with a sob, and put her apron to her eyes.
+
+"I say," said Poynter, giving her apron a twitch and dragging it down,
+"look here."
+
+"Well, I'm sure!" began Elizabeth indignantly.
+
+"Look here; have your wages been paid?"
+
+"Lor', no, sir, not for ever so long," said Elizabeth, with an air of
+surprise at the absurdity of the question.
+
+"Then look here, Elizabeth: you know what I come here for, don't you?"
+
+"I think I can guess, sir," said the woman, suddenly becoming interested
+and smiling weakly.
+
+"Of course you can.  You're a sharp 'un, that's what you are.  So look
+here: the day I'm married I'll pay your wages, and I'll give you a
+fi'-pun note to buy yourself a new bonnet and gown.  Now go up and say
+I'm waiting to see Miss Richmond on particular business."
+
+Elizabeth's eyes opened widely, and there was a peculiar look of
+satisfaction therein, as she closed the door, led the way into the
+dining-room, and then, after giving the visitor a nod of intelligence,
+she left him to go up-stairs and deliver her message.
+
+"Pah! how the place smells!" muttered Poynter.  "Any one would think
+that chap was here now.  A nasty, damp, fusty hole!"
+
+He listened eagerly, but the step he hoped to hear was not coming, and
+he began to walk up and down, twisting his silk handkerchief round, and
+polishing his glossy hat the while.
+
+"I'm screwed up now," he muttered.  "I'm not afraid of her.  She can't
+say no, but if she does, she's got to learn something.  Perhaps she
+don't know what putting on the screw means, and I shall have to teach
+her.  All for her good.  Hah!"
+
+There was no mistake now; a step was descending the stairs, and James
+Poynter once more looked round for a mirror for a final glance; but
+there was nothing of the kind on the blank walls, and he had to face
+Richmond unfurbished.
+
+She entered the room, looking quite calm, but very pale, and the blue
+rings about her eyes told of her sufferings and anxiety.  There was a
+slight heightening of her colour, though, for a few moments, as the
+visitor advanced with extended hand, in which she placed hers for a few
+moments before motioning him to a seat.
+
+"How's the doctor?" he said huskily, and then coughed to clear his
+throat.
+
+"Very, very ill, Mr Poynter," was the reply.  "I am sorry, but I must
+ask you to please see Doctor Maurice, who has promised to attend any of
+my father's patients if they called."
+
+"Oh! bother Doctor Maurice!  I'm better now.  Quite well."
+
+James Poynter had partaken of the greater portion of a bottle of
+champagne before he came, so as to screw himself up, as he termed it;
+and there was plenty of decision of a rude and vulgar type as he spoke.
+
+"I beg your pardon; I thought you had come to consult my father.  You
+have come to see how he was?"
+
+"No, I didn't?  You know what I've come for."
+
+Richmond did know, and perfectly well; but as she scorned to make use of
+farther subterfuge, she remained silent.
+
+"I'm a plain fellow, Miss Rich, and I know what's what," he said,
+"Hendon and I've had lots of chats together about money matters, and you
+want money now."
+
+"Mr Poynter!"
+
+"Now, now, now! sit down, and don't get in a wax, my dear, with a man
+who has come as a friend.  I'm well enough off now, but I know the time
+when a half-crown seemed riches, and if a friend had come to me, I'd ha'
+said `Bless yer!'"
+
+"If you have come as a friend of my brother, Mr Poynter, I am
+grateful."
+
+"Now, don't put me on one side like that, Miss Rich--don't.  I have come
+as a friend--the best of friends.  I know what things are, and that
+you're pushed for money."
+
+"Mr Poynter!" indignantly.
+
+"Yes, I know what you are going to say.  'Tain't put delicate.  Can't
+help that.  I'm a City man of business; but if it ain't put delicately
+it's put honest.  We don't put things delicately in the City."
+
+"I have no doubt of your intentions, Mr Poynter, and I am grateful."
+
+"Thank you, and that's right.  Now, don't kick at what I'm going to say,
+and let it hurt your pride, because it is only between you and your best
+friend--the man as loves you.  There, I came to say that, and I'm glad
+it's out."
+
+"Mr Poynter," said Rich hastily, "I am worn out.  I am ill.  I have
+that terrible trouble in the house.  It is not the time to speak to me
+like this."
+
+"That's where you're wrong, my dear; for when should your best friend
+come if it isn't when you're sick, and so pushed for money that you
+don't know where to turn?"
+
+"Oh, the shame of it!" moaned Rich to herself, as her eyes flashed with
+mortification, while Poynter went on polishing his hat.
+
+"You see I know all about it, and I want to show you that I'm no
+fine-weather friend."
+
+"Mr Poynter I have told you that I am ill; will you please to bring
+this visit to an end?  I--I cannot bear it."
+
+"Yes, you can," he said, in what was meant to be a soothing tone; "let's
+have it over at once, and have done with it.  I won't hurry you.  I only
+want to feel that it will be some day before long; and till then here's
+my hand, and it don't come to you empty.  Say what's troubling you, and
+what you want to pay, and there's my cheque for it.  I don't care how
+much it is."
+
+"Mr Poynter," cried Rich, "you force me to speak out.  I cannot take
+your help, and what you wish is impossible."
+
+"Oh, no, it isn't!" he said, smiling, and leaving his handkerchief
+hanging on his hat as he tried to take her hand, which she withdrew; "I
+saw the doctor the other day, before this upset.  We had a long chat
+over it, and he was willing."
+
+"What! my father willing?"
+
+"To give his consent?  Yes."
+
+"It is impossible!" cried Rich.
+
+"Oh, no, it isn't, and what's more, Hendon and I have often chatted this
+over together, and he's willing, too.  Now, I say, what is the use of
+making a fuss over it?  There, we understand one another, and I want to
+help you at once."
+
+"Mr Poynter," cried Rich, "I now calmly and firmly tell you that what
+you wish can never take place.  Will you allow me to pass?"
+
+"No," said Poynter, flushing angrily, "I won't.  Now, don't put me in a
+temper over this by being foolish.  What's the good of it?  You know
+it's for the best, and that as my wife you can help the old man, and get
+your brother on.  See what a practise you could buy Hendon by and by."
+
+"Mr Poynter, I have already told you, I can say no more."
+
+"Don't say any more, then," he cried, barring her way of exit, as he
+gave his hat a final polish, and pocketed his handkerchief.  "I respect
+you--no, I love you all the more for holding out; but there's been
+enough of it now, so let's talk sensibly.  Come, I say.  Why, after this
+upset some men would have fought shy of the place, even if you'd had a
+fortune.  I don't: I come to you quite humble, and say what shall I do
+for you first?"
+
+Rich stood before him pale, and with her eyes flashing in a way that
+penetrated even the thick hide of his vanity, and was unmistakable.
+
+"Look here," he said angrily, "don't go on like that.  It makes a fellow
+feel put out."
+
+Richmond once more essayed to leave the room, but Poynter stayed her.
+
+"Look here," he said, "I'm a City man, I am.  I began life with nothing,
+but I said to myself I'd make my fortune, and I've made it.  While other
+fellows were fooling about, I worked till I could afford to do as they
+did, and then, perhaps, I had my turn.  Then I saw you, and when I had
+seen you I said to myself that's the woman for my wife."
+
+"Mr Poynter!"
+
+"Yes, and some day it shall be Mrs Poynter.  I said it should, and so
+it shall!"
+
+"Mr Poynter, will you leave this house?"
+
+"No, I won't," he replied bitterly, "not till you've thrown all this
+nonsense aside, and made friends.  What a temper!  Now, look here, Rich,
+I've been afraid of you.  I've come here to see the doctor, and I've
+shivered when I've seen you.  I've wanted to speak to you, but my tongue
+has seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth; but that's all over now,
+and we're going to understand one another before I go."
+
+"Sir, this is insolence!"
+
+"Insolence!" he said, with the champagne effervescing as it were, in his
+veins.  "No, it's love."
+
+Richmond rang the bell.
+
+"Bah!" he said, "what of that?  When the girl comes--if she does--I
+shall tell her to go, for I mean to be master here now."
+
+"Coward!"
+
+"No, not a coward now," he replied, laughing.  "Rich, do you know what I
+can do if I like?  I can come down on brother Hendon for all he owes me,
+and how would it be then?"
+
+Richmond winced, and the flush in her cheeks paled away, while Poynter
+saw it, and went on:
+
+"What should you say if I was to act like a business man would, and come
+down on your father!"
+
+"What?  My father!  He does not owe you money?"
+
+"Doesn't he!" said Poynter, with a mocking laugh.  "You see you don't
+know everything, my dear.  Come, what's it going to be--peace or war?"
+
+"War!" said Richmond firmly.  "My father cannot owe you money, and as to
+my brother, he would sooner die than see his sister sold as a slave to
+pay his debts."
+
+"Would he?" snarled Poynter.  "Why he's as weak as water; I can turn him
+around my thumb.  You tried to keep him away.  He wouldn't own it; but I
+know.  He came, though, all the same, when I asked him; and he will
+come, too, as often as I like, and he'll help me to make you--Bah!
+nonsense!  Come, don't let's talk like this: you're out of sorts, and no
+wonder, and I've come at a bad time.  To-morrow you'll be cool, and
+you'll put that little hand in mine, and say, `James Poynter, you've
+acted like a man and my best friend, and I won't say no.'"
+
+He tried to take her hand, but she shrank from him.
+
+"Sir, I beg that you will not come here again," she said, drawing
+herself up.  "I am not blind to your position with my brother, but--"
+
+"Your brother's a weak-minded young fool!" cried Poynter, who had now
+thoroughly become roused, so withering was the contempt written in
+Rich's eyes; "and--"
+
+He stopped short, for in the heat of the encounter neither had heard the
+latch-key in the front-door, nor the opening of that of the room, to
+admit Hendon Chartley, who stood still for a few moments, and then
+strode to his sister's side and put his arm round her.
+
+"Yes," he said hoarsely, "I have been a weak young fool, James Poynter,
+to let you play with me as you pleased; but please God, with my sister's
+help, I'm going to be strong now, and if you don't leave this house I'll
+kick you out."
+
+"You kick me out!" snarled Poynter, snatching his handkerchief from his
+pocket and polishing his hat savagely; "not you!  So it's going to be
+war, is it?  Why, if I liked--There, you needn't threaten.  I'm not
+going to quarrel with you, my lad, because we're going to be brothers."
+
+"Brothers!" cried Hendon, in tones of contempt.
+
+"Yes, my lad, brothers.  I've gone the right way to work, and you know
+it, too.  There, we're all peppery now.  Rich, my dear, you know what
+I've said.  I'm not angry.  It was only a flash, and you won't make me
+any the worse for speaking out like a man.  Next time I come we shall be
+better friends."
+
+He gave his hat a final polish, flourished his handkerchief, and left
+the room.
+
+"Hendon, Hendon, what have you done?" cried Richmond, as soon as they
+were alone.  "Had we not trouble enough without this?"
+
+"The cad!" cried Hendon angrily.
+
+"And after what had passed you went to him again!"
+
+"How could I help it?" said the young man, with a groan.  "I owe him
+money, and it's like a chain about my neck.  He tugs it, and I'm obliged
+to go."
+
+"And he hinted that our poor father was in his debt."
+
+"The governor?  Oh, Rich!"
+
+Richmond said nothing, but returned to her watching by her father's
+pillow, asking herself whether the chain was being fitted to her own
+limbs, and whether, to save those she loved, she was to become this
+man's slave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+THE DREAMS OF A FEVER.
+
+A dreamy sensation of cold and thick darkness and stumbling on and on,
+with a dull light glowing about his head and fading away directly, then
+more darkness and stumbling on, and once more a dull yellow glow, and
+this fading away, with the darkness increasing.  Then a slight struggle,
+and a few petulant remonstrances.
+
+Why wouldn't the doctor let him sleep?
+
+Then another feeble struggle, a sensation of passing through the air, a
+sudden plunge into the icy water, and then utter darkness, and a noise,
+as if of thunder, in his ears.
+
+But the sudden immersion was electric in its effect, sending a thrill
+through nerve and muscle, though the brain remained still drowsily
+inert, while the natural instinct of desire for life chased away the
+helpless state of collapse; and Mark Heath, old athlete, expert swimmer,
+man hardened by his life in the southern colony, rose to the surface,
+and struck out, swimming slowly and mechanically, as if it were the
+natural action of his muscles.  On and on, breasting the icy water,
+keeping just afloat, but progressing blindly where the tide willed; on
+and on through the darkness, with the yellow fog hanging like a solid
+bank a few feet above his head, as if the rushing of the water were
+cutting the lower stratum away.
+
+Now a yellow light shone weirdly through the mist, came into sight, and
+after glowing for a moment on the murky current, died away.
+
+On still, as if it were the tide--that last tide which sweeps away the
+parting spirit--stroke after stroke, given mechanically; and then there
+was another light--a dull red light, then an angry glow--a stain as of
+blood upon the black water; and it, too, died away, but not till it had
+bathed the upturned face with its crimson hue.
+
+Onward still, the icy water thrilling the swimmer through and through,
+but seeming to bring with it no dread, no sense of horror, no
+recollection of the past, no fear of what was to come: the sensation was
+that he was swimming as one swims without effort in a dream.
+
+A blow from some dark slimy object along whose side he glided, and then
+on once more.
+
+Another blow against something which checked him for a time, and turned
+him face downward, so that the thundering recommenced in his ears; there
+was the sense of strangulation; and then he was steadily swimming on
+once more, past moored barge with its lights, past steamboat pontoon;
+and then with a rush he was driven against a stone pier; his hands
+grasped at the slimy stones without avail, he was turned in an eddy
+around and around, sucked under, and rose again, to swim on and on, till
+at last, in the darkness, his hands touched the muddy pebbles of the
+river shore, his knees struck heavily, and he crawled through a pool,
+and then staggered to his feet, with the water streaming from him.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+What next?  It was all as in a dream, in which, in the gloom of the
+thick night, he stumbled upon a flight of slippery steps, and walked up
+and up, and then along a road which he crossed again and again, and
+always walking on and on.
+
+At times he guided himself by mechanically touching a cold rough stony
+wall, till somehow it was different and felt slippery, and his hand
+glided over the side.
+
+Then darkness, and a sense of wandering.  How long?  Where?  Why was he
+wandering on?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+It was all a dream, but changed to a time when his head was as it were
+on fire, and he was climbing mountains where diamonds glistened at the
+top, but which he could not reach, though he was ever climbing, with the
+sun burning into his brain, and the diamonds that he must find farther
+and farther away.
+
+And so on, and so on, in one long weary journey, to reach that which he
+could not attain, and at last oblivion--soft, sweet, restful oblivion--
+with nothing wrong, nothing a trouble, no weariness or care: it was
+rest, sweet rest, after that toilsome climb.
+
+The next sensation was of a cool soft hand upon his brow, and Mark Heath
+opened his eyes, to gaze into those of a pale, grave-looking woman in
+white, curiously-shaped cap; and she smiled at the look of intelligence
+in his face as he said softly.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Your nurse," was the reply.
+
+"Nurse?"
+
+One word only, but a chapter in its inquiring tone.  "Yes," she said
+gently; "you have been ill.  Don't try to talk.  Take this, and lie
+quite still."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Another long, dreamy time, during which there were noises about his
+head--the gentle, pleasant voice of his nurse, and the firm, decisive
+voice of the doctor.  It might have been hours, it might have been days
+or weeks, he did not know; and then came the morning when he seemed to
+awaken from a long disturbed sleep, full of terrible dreams, with a full
+realisation of his position.
+
+He looked about him, and there were people in beds on either side, while
+a row of windows started from opposite to him, and went on right and
+left.
+
+At last he saw the face of the woman whom he felt that he had seen
+leaning over him in his dream.
+
+She came to his bedside.
+
+"Well?" she said, with a pleasant smile.
+
+"Is this a hospital?" he said eagerly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I have met with some accident--hurt?"
+
+"No," was the reply; "not an accident.  You have been ill."
+
+"Ill?  How came I here?"
+
+He looked wildly in the calm soft face before him, and behind it there
+seemed to be a dense mental mist which he could not penetrate.  There
+was the nurse; and as he lay, it seemed to him that he could think as
+far as their presence there, and no further.
+
+"You had better wait till the doctor has been round."
+
+"If you don't tell me what all this means," he said impetuously, "you
+will make me worse."
+
+She laid her hand upon his forehead, to find that it was perfectly cool,
+and he caught her fingers in his as she was drawing them away.  "Don't
+keep me in suspense," he said piteously.
+
+"Well, I will tell you.  The police brought you here a fortnight ago.
+They found you lying in a doorway, drenched with water and fast asleep.
+You were quite delirious, and you have been very ill."
+
+"Ill?  Yes, I feel so weak," he muttered, as he struggled to penetrate
+the mist which seemed to shut him in, till the nurse's next words gave
+him a clue to the way out.
+
+"We do not even know who you are; only that they suppose you to be a
+sailor who has just left his ship."
+
+"Heath--Mark Heath," he said quickly.
+
+"Ah!  And your friends?  We want to communicate with them."
+
+"My friends!  No; it would frighten her, poor little girl!"
+
+"The cause for alarm is passed," said the nurse gravely.
+
+"Yes.  Ah!  I begin to recollect now," he said.  "Send to Miss Heath--my
+sister--19 Upper Brunswick Avenue, Bloomsbury."
+
+"Yes; and now lie still."
+
+The nurse left him, and he lay thinking, and gradually finding in the
+mist the pieces of the puzzle of his past adventure, till he seemed to
+have them nearly all there.
+
+Then came the doctor with a few words of encouragement.
+
+"You'll do now," he said.  "Narrow escape of losing your hair, young
+fellow.  Next time you come from sea don't touch the drink."
+
+Mark Heath lay back thinking, and with the puzzle pretty well fitted
+together now all but what had happened since, half wild with exhaustion
+and excitement, he had taken refuge at Doctor Chartley's.
+
+"Don't touch the drink!" he muttered.  "He thinks I have had D.T.  Well,
+I did drink--brandy.  I had some.  Yes; I remember now--at the doctor's,
+and--Great Heavens!"
+
+He paused, with his hands pressed to his forehead; and now the light had
+come back clearly.
+
+He lay waiting till the nurse passed round again, and he signed to her
+to come to his side.
+
+"You have sent to my sister?"
+
+"Yes; a messenger has been sent."
+
+"My clothes?" he said, in an eager whisper.  "Where are they?"
+
+"They have been taken care of quite safely."
+
+"And the bag, and the belt--the cash-belt I had strapped round my
+waist?"
+
+"I will make inquiries."
+
+The nurse went away, and Mark Heath lay in an agony of spirit which he
+could hardly control till her return, to announce that he had nothing
+whatever upon him in the way of bag or money when found by the police.
+
+Mark lay as if stunned till the messenger returned with the intelligence
+that Miss Heath had left the lodgings indicated; that the people there
+were new, and could give no information whatever.
+
+"But you have other friends," said the nurse, as she looked down
+pityingly in the patient's agitated face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have friends.  Write for me to--"
+
+He paused for a few moments, with a hysterical sob rising to his lips as
+he recalled how he had struggled to return to her wealthy, and had come
+back a beggar.
+
+"Yes, to--"
+
+The gently-spoken inquiry roused him, and he went on.  "To Miss
+Richmond--"
+
+"Richmond?" said the nurse, looking up inquiringly as she took down the
+name in a little memorandum-book.
+
+"Miss Richmond Chartley, 27 Ramillies Street, Queen's Square,
+Bloomsbury, to beg her to find and send my sister here."
+
+The nurse smiled, and left him to his thoughts, which now came freely
+enough--too freely to help him to convalescence.
+
+It was late in the evening when the nurse came to announce that there
+were visitors; and after a few grave firm words, bidding him be calm,
+she left him, and returned with Janet and Richmond, both trembling and
+agitated, to grasp his hands, and fight hard against the desire to throw
+themselves sobbing upon his breast.
+
+The nurse remained, not from curiosity, but to watch over her patient,
+whom she had literally dragged from the grasp of death, while, after the
+first loving words, Mark Heath gazed at Richmond in a troubled way, and
+proceeded to tell of his adventures.
+
+"But did you really bring back a bag of diamonds, Mark, or is it--"
+
+"Fancy," he said bitterly.  "No; it is no fancy.  I have been delirious,
+Jenny; but I am sane enough now.  I had the bag of diamonds, and over a
+hundred pounds in gold, in a belt about my waist.  Rich, darling, I was
+silent during these past two years; for I vowed that I would not write
+again till I could come back to you and say I have fulfilled my promise,
+and now I have come to you a beggar."
+
+"Yes," said Richmond, laying her hand in his, as an ineffably sweet look
+of content beamed from her eyes in his, and there was tender yearning
+love in every tone of her sweet deep voice; "but you have come back
+alive after we had long mourned you as dead."
+
+"Better that I had been," he said bitterly.  "Better that that dark
+night's work had been completed than I should have come back a beggar."
+
+Janet and Richmond exchanged glances; which with a sick man's suspicion
+he noted, and his brow contracted.
+
+"They doubt me," he thought.
+
+"But you have come back, Mark.  We are young; and there is our life
+before us.  I do not complain," said Richmond gently.  "We must wait."
+
+"Wait!" he said bitterly; and he uttered a low groan, which made the
+nurse approach.  "No, no," he said, "I will be quite calm."  The nurse
+drew back.
+
+"Tell me, Mark," said Janet, with her pretty little earnest face
+puckered up.  "Why did you not come straight to me?  How stupid?  Of
+course you didn't know where, as you did not get my last letters?"
+
+"No, I have had no letters for a year.  How could I, out in that
+desert?"
+
+"But, Mark, you recollect being pursued by those men!"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"You are sure it was not a dream?"
+
+He looked at her almost fiercely.
+
+"Dream?  Could a man dream a thing like that?"
+
+"Don't be cross with me, dear Mark," she said, laying her cheek against
+his.  "It seems so strange, and you have been very, very ill.  My own
+darling brother!"
+
+It was not jealousy, but something very near akin, that troubled Rich as
+she stood there, with an intense longing to take her friend's place,
+after the long parting.  But there was the recollection that their
+parting had not been the warm passionate embracing of lovers, only calm
+and full of the hope of what might be.
+
+Janet continued:
+
+"And you went late at night through a dreadful fog, and took refuge with
+a friend?"
+
+"Yes," he said, with his features contracting, and a shudder passing
+through him, as he gazed furtively at Rich.
+
+"And what can you recollect besides?  Are you sure you had what you
+say--diamonds and money?"
+
+"Yes, I am certain."
+
+"I never wore diamonds," said Janet, with her pretty white forehead
+growing more puckered, "and I don't want any; but after being so poor,
+and with one's dearest friends so poor, and when it would make every one
+so happy, I should like you to find them again."
+
+Mark uttered a low groan.
+
+"But tell me, Mark, what else can you recollect?"
+
+"Very little," he said.  "It all seems misty; but I recollect drinking
+something."
+
+"Brandy, Mark?"
+
+"Yes; and afterwards a medicine that was to calm him, for I was half mad
+with excitement."
+
+"Yes; go on."
+
+"Then everything is confused: I seemed to fall asleep--a long restful
+sleep, that was broken by my taking a long journey."
+
+"Yes, but that was dreaming, dear."
+
+"Maybe," he said, "and then I was swimming--swimming for life--and then
+toiling on and on, a long weary journey under a hot sun to get my
+diamonds."
+
+"Yes, dear, fever," said Janet, with the tears streaming down her
+cheeks.  "Oh, Mark, what you have suffered!  Rich, love, do you hear?"
+
+"Yes--yes," cried Rich, who seemed to be roused from a strange dream, in
+which she was fighting to recall another of which she had a misty
+recollection--a dream that troubled her on the night she took the
+chloral, when half mad with pain.
+
+"You have seen and borne so much, dear," said Janet piteously.  "Was not
+all this about the bag of diamonds and those people a feverish dream?"
+
+"Jenny, do you want to drive me mad?"
+
+"My own dear old darling brother, no," she whispered caressingly; and
+once more that strange half-jealous feeling swept like a hot breath of
+wind across Rich, making her pale face flush.  "I only want to make you
+see things rightly, and not fret about a fancy."
+
+"I tell you it was no fancy," he said angrily; and then, as the nurse
+held up a warning hand.  "All right," he added, "I'll be calm."
+
+"Say something to him, Rich," said Janet piteously.
+
+Rich started, and then took Mark's hand.  "You say that you went to the
+house of a friend?" she whispered.
+
+"Ye-es," he replied hesitatingly.
+
+"And that you partook of some medicine that was to make you sleep?"
+
+He bowed his head slowly.
+
+"And that your next clear recollection is of lying here, where you were
+brought after being found delirious by the police?"
+
+"Yes, yes," he said impatiently.
+
+"Robbed?"
+
+"Stripped of everything," he said bitterly.
+
+"It could not have been a friend, then, with whom you took refuge," said
+Rich.
+
+Mark was silent.
+
+"Must it not have been a dream?" said Janet in a whisper to her
+companion.
+
+"No," said Rich aloud.  "I think that all Mark recollects before he took
+this medicine must be true, and that this friend must have drugged him."
+
+Mark drew a long, catching breath between his teeth.
+
+"And robbed him while he slept."
+
+Mark's breast rose and fell as if he were suffering some great emotion,
+and he stared at Rich wildly, his hand twitching and his lip quivering
+as he waited for her next speech, which seemed to crush him, as she
+asked in a clear firm voice.
+
+"Who was the friend to whose house you went?"
+
+He looked at her wildly, with the thoughts of the consequences of
+telling her that which he believed to be the truth--that Dr Chartley--
+her father--the father of the woman he passionately loved--had drugged
+him--taken the treasure for which he had fought so hard, and then cast
+him forth feverish and delirious into the river to die.  For he realised
+it now: he had been swimming; he could even recall the very plunge; he
+had been cast into the river to drown, and somehow he must have
+struggled out.
+
+"Who was the friend, Mark?" she said again, in her calm firm way.
+
+"Yes, who was it?" cried Janet, with her little lips compressed.  "You
+are right, Rich.  Some one did do this dreadful thing.  Who was it,
+Mark?"
+
+The sick man turned from her with a shudder, while she, all excitement
+now, pressed his hard hand.
+
+"Tell us, Mark dear, that he may be punished, and made to restore what
+he has stolen."
+
+"No, no!" he said excitedly; "I cannot tell you--I do not know."
+
+"Try and recollect, Mark," said Rich gently; and she looked in his face
+with an appealing smile.
+
+"No, no!" he gasped, as he shuddered again; "it is impossible.  I--I do
+not know.  And Heaven forgive me for my lie!" he muttered, as he sharply
+withdrew his hands, sank back upon his pillow, and covered his face.
+
+"He must be left now," said the nurse firmly, "He is very weak, and your
+visit is proving painful.  Say good-night to him.  You can come
+to-morrow.  He will be stronger after a night's rest."
+
+"But--there is no danger?" whispered Rich, as she caught the sister's
+hand.
+
+"No; the danger is past, but he must be kept quiet.  Say good-night."
+
+Janet bent down and kissed her brother lovingly; and as she drew back
+from his pallid drawn face, Rich took her place and held out her hand.
+
+Mark caught it in both his, and there was an agonised look in his eyes.
+
+"Rich," he whispered passionately, "I have come back to you a beggar,
+after fighting so hard.  Heaven knows how hard, and what I am suffering
+for your sake.  I cannot tell you more.  I only say, believe in me and
+trust in me.  Kiss me, my love--my love."
+
+Richmond Chartley's pale face deepened, but she did not hesitate.  There
+were patients here and there who lay witnessing the scene, and there
+were others present; but at that moment the world seemed very small, and
+they two the only living creatures it contained, as she bent down,
+passed her arm beneath his neck, and for the first time her lips met
+his.
+
+"Rich--poor--what does it matter, Mark?" she whispered, with her warm
+breath seeming to caress his cheek.  "You have come back to me, as it
+were, from the dead."
+
+She drew down her veil as she rose from the parting, and the nurse's
+quick experienced eyes noted the restful happy look that had come over
+her patient's face.
+
+"Good-bye," she said to the two visitors.  "May I?"
+
+Rich leaned forward, and the two women kissed.
+
+"I had some one once whom I dearly loved.  It pleased God that he should
+die--for his country--trying to save a brother officer's life.
+Good-bye, dear.  You are the best physician for him now.  Come back
+soon."
+
+Janet impulsively threw her arms about the sister's neck and kissed her.
+
+"And I never thanked you for your care of my poor brother," she said.
+"But tell me, he is still a little wandering, is he not?"
+
+"I could not help hearing all that passed," was the reply.  "It was my
+duty to be present.  I have, of course, had some experience of such
+cases, and I fear that he must have been drinking heavily in riotous
+company, and these ideas have become impressed upon his brain."
+
+"And they are fancies?"
+
+"I think so, but as he grows stronger these ideas will weaken, and you,
+his sister--and you--Ah, men are sometimes very weak, but to whom should
+they come for forgiveness when weak and repentant, if not to us?"
+
+"But I won't believe my Mark has been going on as she hinted," said
+Janet, through her tears, as she walked away, weeping bitterly, and
+clinging tightly to Rich's arm.
+
+"No; it is impossible," replied Rich; and with the feeling upon her that
+it was her duty to suffer for all in turn, and be calm and patient, she
+fought down her own longing to burst into a passionate fit of weeping,
+and walked on to resume her watch by her father's side, where he lay
+still insensible, as if in a sleep which must end in death.
+
+"Rich dear, if it is true, and poor Mark was drugged and robbed, the
+wretch who did it shall be brought to justice, shall he not?"
+
+"Yes," said Rich, as she clasped the weeping girl to her breast.
+
+And as she sat there in the silent chamber, through the dark watches of
+the night, at times a feeling of exultation and joy filled her breast,
+while at others a hot pang of rage shot through her, and she felt that
+she could slay the wretch who had raised a hand against him who had
+returned to her as from the dead.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+JANET IS HAUNTED.
+
+A fortnight passed, and Mark was able to join his sister at her lodging,
+from which she was out all day.
+
+It was very hard work, that lesson-giving at different houses, but
+little Janet trudged on from place to place, rarely ever travelling by
+omnibus unless absolutely obliged, so that she might economise and make
+her earnings help out her income of twenty-one pounds per annum.
+
+Rather a small sum in London, but it was safe.  Seven hundred pounds'
+worth of stock in the Three per Cents., and bringing in ten pounds ten
+shillings every half-year.
+
+One evening, as she was returning on foot, walking very rapidly, so as
+to get back as soon as possible to Mark, her heart sank, and she felt
+faint in spirit as she thought of her future and its prospects.  To go
+on teach, teach, teach, and try to make stupid girls achieve something
+approaching skill in handling their brushes, so that parents might be
+satisfied.  For, poor girl, she found what most teachers do, that when a
+child does not progress, it is always the instructor's fault, not that
+of the disciple.
+
+"I shall be better when I've had some tea," she said to herself, as the
+tears gathered in her eyes.  "Why do I murmur so?  Rich never complains,
+and her troubles are as great as mine.  I ought to be glad and rejoice
+that poor Mark has come back safely, and--there he is again."
+
+Janet's little heart beat wildly with fear as a tall muffled-up figure
+appeared from a doorway in the sombre-looking square into which she had
+turned from the street where she gave lessons three afternoons a week,
+and followed her at a short distance behind.  For two months past,
+evening after evening, that figure had been there, making her heart
+palpitate as she thought of what a weak, helpless little creature she
+was, and how unprotected in this busy world.
+
+It was hard work to keep steadily on without looking round, without
+starting off at a run.  Her breast seemed filled with that wild scream
+which she longed to utter, but dared not, telling herself that to seem
+afraid or to notice the figure was to invite assault.
+
+"Oh, if Mark would only get well," she thought, "or if Rich could come
+and meet me!"
+
+Then she called herself a coward, and stepped daintily on along the
+muddy street, wondering whether it would be possible to go by some other
+way, and so avoid this shadow which dogged her steps.
+
+There was one way to get over it--to mention if to Rich, and ask her to
+bid Hendon wait for her and see her home.  But that, she said, she would
+sooner die than do; so she had tried four different ways of reaching
+home, and always with the figure following her to the door of the house
+where she lodged, and where Mark sat waiting for her to come.
+
+It was always the same: the muffled-up figure followed her closely, and
+kept on the same side of the way till he reached her door, when it
+crossed over, and waited till she went in, breathless and trembling.
+
+Over and over again the little frightened girl tried to devise some
+plan, but all in vain; till this night of the foggy winter she was
+crossing the street, rejoicing that he was so near home, when there was
+a shout, a horse's hot breath was upon her cheek, and she was sent
+staggering sideways, and would have fallen had not the muffled-up figure
+been at hand, caught her in his arms, and borne her to the pavement,
+while the cab disappeared in the yellow mist.
+
+"My own darling!  Are you hurt?" he cried passionately.
+
+"Hendon!  You!" she panted.
+
+"Yes, I," he said.  "You are hurt!"
+
+"No, no," she cried; "only frightened.  The horse struck my shoulder.
+But--but was it you who followed every night all the way home?"
+
+"Yes," he said, coldly now, "you knew it was."
+
+"I did not," she retorted angrily; and then in half hysterical terms,
+"how dare you go on frightening me night after night like this?  It has
+been horrible.  You have made me ill."
+
+"Made you ill?" he said.  "How could I let you go about all alone these
+dark evenings?  I was forbidden to talk to you as I wished, but there
+was no reason why I should not watch over you.  How's Mark?"
+
+"Getting better," said Janet, drawing a breath of relief at her
+companion's sudden change in the conversation; for she felt that had he
+continued in that same sad reproachful strain she must have hung upon
+his arm, and sobbed and thanked him for his chivalrous conduct.  There
+was something, too, so sweet in the feeling that he must love her very
+dearly in spite of all the rebuffs he had received; and somehow as they
+walked on, a gleam of sunny yellow came through the misty greys and
+dingy drabs with which from her mental colour-box she had been tingeing
+her future life.  There was even a dash of ultramarine, too--a brighter
+blue than her eyes--and her heart began to beat quite another tune.
+
+"May I come and walk home with you every night?" said Hendon at last,
+as, after repeated assurances that she was not hurt, they stopped at
+last at the street door.
+
+"No," she said decidedly; and her little lips were tightly compressed,
+so that they should not give vent to a sob.
+
+"How cruel you are, Janet!"
+
+"For trying to do what is right," she said firmly.  "What would your
+sister say if, after all that has passed, I were to be so weak?"
+
+"May I follow you at a distance, as I have done all this time?" he
+pleaded.
+
+"No.  You have only frightened me almost to death," she replied.  "Will
+you come up and see poor Mark?"
+
+"Not to-night," he said bitterly; "I couldn't bear it now.  Janet, if I
+go to the bad, it won't be all my fault.  I know I'm a weak fellow, but
+with something to act as ballast, I should be all right.  What have I
+done that you should be so cold?"
+
+For answer, Janet held out her hand.
+
+"Good-night, Mr Chartley," she said quietly; but he did not take the
+hand, only turned away, walking rapidly along the street, while,
+fighting hard to keep from bursting into a violent fit of sobbing, Janet
+hurried up to her room, to find her brother looking haggard and wild as
+he slowly paced the floor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+MARK HEATH IN THE DARK.
+
+"No--no--no!"  Always the same determined answer to the declarations of
+Janet that some steps should be taken to investigate the affairs of the
+night on which her brother had first reached London.
+
+"No," he said; "I will have nothing done.  Let me get well, and away
+from here.  I've escaped with my life."
+
+"And what will you do, Mark?" asked Janet, as she sat by his side.
+
+"Try again," he said.  "But I must first get well."
+
+He had heard that the doctor was ill, but everything else had been kept
+from him, till one evening, as he was seated by the fire at Janet's neat
+little lodgings, and his sister was called down to see a visitor.
+
+She had a suspicion of who it was, and found Richmond waiting.
+
+"Come up and see him."
+
+Richmond hesitated.
+
+"I must not stay long," she said.  "My father frets for me if I am
+away."
+
+"And I am situated almost the same.  Mark does not like to be left.
+Come up, dear, and help me to persuade him that he ought to employ the
+police."
+
+"No, no! don't talk of them," said Richmond, with a shudder.  "I want
+the horror at our house forgotten, and they keep reminding me that the
+law does not sleep."
+
+"Why, Rich, how strangely you talk!"
+
+"Strangely, dear!  No.  Only it comes back like a nightmare ever since
+that terrible affair, so soon as it is mentioned.  I seem to be
+wandering about the house in misery, fever, and pain, trying to see
+through a mist that I cannot penetrate.  I don't know how it is or what
+it means, but I have this horrible thought troubling me, that I came
+down that night to go to the surgery, and that I saw something."
+
+"Saw something!  Saw what?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I cannot tell," said Rich with a shudder.  "I was
+better this morning, and more hopeful.  My poor father seemed a little
+clearer in his mind, but the past is all a blank to him."
+
+"He knew me, dear, when I came yesterday."
+
+"Oh, yes! and he knows me well enough.  He talks sensibly about what is
+going on around him.  But that night when he was struck down, the blows
+seemed to break away the connection between the present and the past.
+The physician, who has seen him, says very little, but I can see that he
+considers the case hopeless."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, dear!  We must all hope.  I hope to be something
+better some day than a poor teacher.  Come up now, and help me to
+persuade Mark to have in the police."
+
+"No, no!" cried Rich hastily.
+
+"Why not, dear?  Think what it means if it is true about the diamonds,
+and we could get them back."
+
+"But it cannot be true, Janet; and as to the police, they make me
+shudder.  They were at our house this morning to see Hendon, and with
+him my father, to try whether they could revive his memory, and get hold
+of a clue to those men who came to our house that night, and they have
+found out nothing.  They say they are straining every nerve now to find
+that poor boy.  They think he must hold the clue."
+
+"I think I could find it all out if I tried," said Janet.  "Had your
+father any enemies?"
+
+Richmond shook her head.
+
+"Any one to whom he owed money?"
+
+Richmond started, and her thoughts reverted to Poynter.
+
+"No, no, no--impossible!  Let it rest, dear.  I have thought over it,
+till it nearly drives me mad!" she cried excitedly.
+
+"It is very strange;" continued Janet musingly.  "I don't like to let it
+rest, and there is our trouble, too.  Rich dear, has it ever occurred to
+you that it must have been the same night when poor Mark was found
+wandering about?"
+
+"Yes, dear.  I have calculated it out from what the hospital sister told
+me.  It was the same night."
+
+Rich looked at her wonderingly.
+
+"It was, dear," continued Janet.  "While you had that horror at home, I
+was sleeping here comfortably, and poor Mark was wandering about the
+cruel streets half wild."
+
+Rich made a gesture to her friend to be silent, and Janet passed her arm
+about her waist, to lead her up-stairs, but with the full determination
+to try and make some investigation.  For though there were times when
+the thought of her brother having brought home a bag of diamonds seemed
+mythical, and the birth of his diseased imagination--especially as he
+never named them now--at other times visions of comparative wealth had
+come to her, in the midst of which she seemed to see herself with
+Hendon, and her old companion and her brother happily looking on.
+
+Mark was seated gazing moodily at the fire as Richmond entered with his
+sister, and he rose to take her hands, and lead her to a chair.
+
+But somehow both seemed constrained and troubled by thoughts which they
+kept from each other.
+
+"I know," said Janet to herself, "it's that dreadful money which is
+keeping them apart, and if I don't do something, Mark will be going off
+again to seek his fortune, and it is like condemning poor Rich and
+himself to a life of misery and waiting."
+
+She sat working, but furtively watching the others all the while.
+
+"This poverty is killing us all," she said to herself at last, "and I
+will speak.  It may be true, and he shall do something to find out."
+
+"Mark dear," she said aloud, "I have something to say."
+
+"Indeed!  Well, what is it?"
+
+"I've come to the conclusion that, now you are better, you ought to
+speak out like a man, and--"
+
+"Stop!" he said hoarsely.
+
+"No, Mark, I shall not stop," cried Janet decidedly.  "You say that you
+went to a friend's house that night with all your money and--and
+treasure."
+
+"Girl! will you be silent?" he cried savagely.
+
+"No," said Janet, laughing.  "I want you to see this matter as I do.
+Whoever this man is, he ought to be forced to give up what he must have
+stolen from you.  If you will not stir, I shall."
+
+"You will?"
+
+"Yes, I shall take counsel with Hendon again."
+
+"Again?" almost yelled Mark.
+
+"Yes, sir, again.  We have spoken over the matter together, and he
+agrees that the police ought to be seen, and that you must make this
+friend give up what he has taken."
+
+"You'll drive me mad, Janet.  Hendon thinks this?"
+
+"Yes; and we are going to do it at once, for the sake of you and Rich."
+
+"You shall not stir!" cried Mark fiercely.
+
+"Why not?" interposed Rich, taking his hand.  "I think with my brother
+and Janet now, much as I dislike these investigations."
+
+"You think so--you?" cried Mark wildly.
+
+"Yes.  Why not?" said Rich.  "Mark dear, why should you flinch from
+speaking out?  You have no unworthy motive."
+
+"Unworthy motive?  No," he said bitterly, "I give up everything to spare
+another."
+
+"Then you shall not," said Janet firmly.  "Your duty is to Richmond
+here; your promised wife."
+
+"Yes," said Mark moodily; "my duty is to Rich here, my promised wife."
+
+"And yet for the sake of some unworthy wretch, you make her suffer--yes,
+sir, and me too.  Why, Rich, dear Rich, what is the matter?"
+
+She flew to her friend's side, and caught her hands; for Rich had
+started from her chair, looking wildly from one to the other, as,
+struggling as it were from out of a confused mist, how revived she could
+not tell, there came back to her, memory by memory, the scenes of that
+terrible night.  Yes: she remembered now, though it still seemed like a
+dream--a fragmentary, misty dream.
+
+Yes, that was the clue!  Janet had said it was upon that same night that
+Mark had returned--had been found senseless in the streets.
+
+"Don't, don't speak to me for a minute!" she cried, as she fought hard
+to recall everything--the maddening pain that night, the visit to the
+surgery, the chloral she had obtained and taken, and then that strange
+wild sleep.
+
+Yes; she recalled it now.  She dreamed she had come down to fetch
+something else from the surgery to allay the agony she suffered, and
+that the door was locked, and that she had heard voices--her father's
+voice, Mark's voice--yes, it was Mark's voice; and she had stood there
+trembling till it died away; and that formed part of her dream.
+
+But now the voice was here in this room, and he caught her hand with a
+wildly suspicious look in his eye.
+
+"What are you thinking?" he said.
+
+She turned upon him sharply.
+
+"The name of your friend with whom you took refuge that night?" she
+said; and her eyes flashed as she gazed searchingly in his.
+
+He dropped her hand, and turned away, with his lips compressed and face
+contracted.
+
+"Mark," she cried, "why do you not speak?  Where did you go that night
+when you returned?"
+
+He looked at her for a moment, and then turned away again.  "I do not
+know," he said hoarsely.
+
+"It is not true," cried Rich.  "You must speak now.  It was to our house
+you came."
+
+"What!"
+
+"I remember now.  I heard your voice.  You were with my father--in the
+surgery."
+
+"Rich," he said, almost savagely, as he caught her wrist, "think of what
+you are saying!"
+
+"Rich dear, don't say that!" cried Janet piteously.
+
+"I know what I am saying," she said excitedly; and though her face was
+calm, it was evident that she was suffering terribly.
+
+"No, no," he cried; "no, dear, you are wrong."
+
+"No, Mark, I am right: you told us you took refuge with a friend--that
+friend was my father."
+
+"What!  Rich, do you know what you are saying--do you know what this
+means if the police should hear?"
+
+"Yes," she cried; "the clearing up of a terrible mystery; perhaps the
+restoration of all that you have lost."
+
+"Janet, is she mad?" cried Mark.  "Do you not see what all this means?"
+
+Janet shook her head with a helpless look on her face.
+
+"Then I will tell you," he thundered: "it means ruin--misery to us all.
+Girl, for pity's sake, be silent!  Rich, dear Rich, I love you with a
+man's first strong love.  Have I not slaved for you all these years, to
+win you for my own true wife?  Don't--don't raise this up between us.
+What is poverty to such a shadow as this?"
+
+"I do not understand you," she cried; "but it is true.  You did come to
+my father's house that night."
+
+He gazed at her in blank despair.
+
+"Why do you look at me like that?  Do you not see the light?"
+
+"The light!" he cried, with a bitter laugh.  "I see you--the woman I
+love--trying to force me into a position which I would sooner die than
+hold.  Hush, for mercy's sake!  No, no, no!" he muttered; and then
+aloud, "Call it a lie, or a desperate man's last cry for help.  I did
+not come to your father's house that night."
+
+Rich gazed at him in blank astonishment for the moment, and then she
+flung her arms about his neck, and with her eyes close to his, she
+cried.
+
+"What are you thinking--that it was my father who drugged and robbed
+you, or my brother?  Oh, Mark?"
+
+She seemed to throw him off as she stepped back, her pale face flushing,
+and a look of indignant anger in her eyes.
+
+"What does this mean?" cried Janet; but her words fell unheeded.
+
+"Shame on you!  You are silent.  How could you think this thing?"
+
+"Heaven help me!" groaned Mark.  "And I fought so hard!"
+
+By a sudden revulsion of feeling, Rich turned to him again, and with her
+sweet rich voice, fall of the agony of her heart, she caught his hands.
+
+"How could you think it of him, Mark!  My poor gentle-hearted father!
+Do you not see?  Did you not tell us that you were hunted from place to
+place by those men?"
+
+"Rich, my darling," groaned Mark, as he strained her to his breast, "do
+you not see that you are digging a gulf between us, and that you will
+soon be standing on the other side, shrinking from me in abhorrence as
+the man who has brought this charge against your father?  And God knows
+how I have striven to bear all in silence!"
+
+"But, Mark--"
+
+"Rich, it is your doing, not mine!" he cried wildly.  "What are the
+diamonds to the loss of you?"
+
+"But, Mark," she cried impetuously, "this is madness.  You suspect him.
+You shall speak now--you shall.  You have thought my father did this
+thing?"
+
+"You drag it from me," he groaned.  "I do."
+
+"Oh, shame!" cried Richmond, shrinking from him; "to suspect the poor
+old man, who nearly died in your defence."
+
+"What!" cried Mark.
+
+"Whom we found struck down bleeding, and whom I am neglecting now, when
+he is hovering almost between life and death--neglecting that I might
+come to him whom I thought the soul of chivalry and faith."
+
+"Stop!" cried Mark, in a harsh voice, as he released Rich, who straggled
+from him, and stood with his hands pressed to his eyes.  "Janet, I have
+been off my head.  I seem to think wildly now and then.  Do I hear her
+aright, or am I still confused?  What does she say?"
+
+"I--I don't quite know myself," faltered Janet, bursting into tears.
+
+"And yet I seem to understand," cried Mark excitedly.  "Rich dearest,
+speak to me again.  Your father found--struck down--in my defence?"
+
+"Yes, that is what I said," replied Rich coldly.
+
+"Struck down in my defence.  I did not know of this."
+
+"You--you knew he was very ill," sobbed Janet.
+
+"Yes; but I knew no more."
+
+"How could we tell you when you were nearly dead?" sobbed Janet; "and
+the doctor said you were not to be troubled in any way."
+
+Mark Heath stood as if dazed for a few minutes, striving to think
+coherently, and master the delusion, under which he had been suffering.
+
+"Rich," he cried at last, "for God's sake, tell me all!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+A PHYSICIAN UNHEALED.
+
+James Poynter sat polishing his hat with his handkerchief, and staring
+at Hendon with a contraction, half smile, half grin, upon his face.
+
+"I tell you I can't pay you.  You forced the money upon me."
+
+"I forced it on you!  Come, that's a good one!  Now, are you going to
+pay?"
+
+"You know I can't, Poynter.  You must wait."
+
+"Not likely.  Well, I must have my money, and what your father owes me
+too."
+
+"I have only your word that he does owe you money, James Poynter."
+
+"All right, Mr Hendon; go on.  Insult me.  The more patient I am the
+more advantage you take.  Ask him if he don't."
+
+"Ask him?" said the young man bitterly; "you know his mind is as good as
+gone."
+
+"Is it as bad as that?" said Poynter, with assumed pity, but his eyes
+twinkling with eagerness, as he wound the handkerchief round and round.
+
+"Bad?  Yes.  Millington, our best man, saw him yesterday, and he says
+nothing but an operation and raising the bone pressing on the brain will
+relieve him; and at his age he would not be responsible for the result."
+
+Poynter drew a breath fall of satisfaction, and smiled at his polished
+hat.
+
+"Well, I think the operation ought to be performed, so as to bring him
+to his senses again.  Poor old boy!  He does seem queer.  I asked him--"
+
+"What, you spoke to that poor old man about your cursed debt!" cried
+Hendon furiously.
+
+"Of course I did.  Cursed debt, indeed!  Why, I've behaved as well as a
+man could behave.  Lookye here, do you want me to sell you up?"
+
+Hendon uttered an ejaculation, and, writhing under his impotence, he
+began pacing the old dining-room, while with a show of proprietorship
+James Poynter set down his hat, put his handkerchief therein, took out
+his case, and selected a cigar.
+
+"Have a weed?" he said, nipping the end of the one he was about to
+smoke.
+
+"Damn you, and your cigars too!" cried the young man furiously.
+
+"Thank ye, cub!" said Poynter, lighting up.  "There, you won't make me
+waxy.  I'm a true friend in disguise.  Ah, this is one of a noo lot I
+bought.  Have one, old man."
+
+Hendon made a fierce gesticulation, and scowled in the grinning face.
+
+"How long are you going to stop here?" he said.
+
+"Long as I like.  P'raps I shall have the house done up, and come and
+live here."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Ah! what indeed!  Suppose I bought the lease of the governor?  What
+have you got to say to that?"
+
+Hendon glared at him wildly.
+
+"How's the little angel--Janet?"
+
+Hendon's hands clenched, and he ground his teeth, while Poynter laughed
+at him.
+
+"So the big brother's out of the hospital; got over his D.T., and
+lodging with his sister, eh?"
+
+Hendon made no reply.
+
+"Come, old chap," continued Poynter, "have a cigar, and do try and be
+sensible.  I don't want to do nothing hard, but of course a man must
+fight for his own hand.  I haven't come here to sell you up, but to
+bring you to your senses, like the friend I always was.  Now look here,
+Hendon, this brother seems to be as loose a fish as a girl could have
+for a relation; but Miss Heath's as smart a little lass as e'er
+stepped--"
+
+"Have the goodness to leave Miss Heath's name alone, sir."
+
+"Waxy again.  Now look here, Hendon, I'm a rich man.  Suppose I say to
+you, my lad, look out for a snug little practice; I'll lend you the
+money--can't afford to give it--buy the practice, and marry Janet.
+Isn't that being a friend?"
+
+Hendon went on pacing the room.
+
+"Sulky, eh?  All right: answer me this, then.  Shouldn't I make your
+sister a better husband than this Mark Heath?  Come, be sensible; take
+me up-stairs to see her.  Now, at once.  Let me make things pleasant for
+all of you.  What's the good of being enemies, when we might be
+friends?"
+
+"Friends!"
+
+"Better than being master and slave, eh, Hendon, my lad?  Borrower slave
+to the lender, eh?"
+
+"Ah!" ejaculated Hendon.
+
+"Come, come, you're sensible now.  Take me up-stairs, and let's have it
+out with Rich."
+
+"With Rich!" cried Hendon passionately.
+
+"There, don't you be so cocky, young man.  I don't call your Janet,
+Jenny.  Yes, with Rich; my own dear darling Rich.  There!  How do you
+like that?  Now then, let's get it over."
+
+"My sister is not at home."
+
+"Then we'll go up and see the old man; and let's hear what he'll say to
+it all.  He won't deny that he's in my debt."
+
+"Poor old fellow, no," groaned Hendon to himself.
+
+"I say," said Poynter, turning grave, "where's Rich?  She hasn't gone to
+see that sailor chap?"
+
+"I don't know whom you mean by `sailor chap,'" said Hendon bitterly.
+
+"Then I'll tell you," he said.  "I mean Mark Heath, and I've got a
+theory of my own about him."
+
+"Curse you and your theories!" cried Hendon fiercely.
+
+"Yes, and bless me and my money," said Poynter, laughingly.
+
+"Stop!  Where are you going?"
+
+"This is my house, or as good as mine," said Poynter; "and I'm going up
+to see my poor old father-in-law to be.  I don't think he's properly
+seen to, and I mean to have him off down to the seaside, to try and pull
+him round.  Coming?"
+
+Hendon was so much staggered by his visitor's cool insolence that
+Poynter was at the foot of the staircase before he thought to follow;
+and then, feeling that this man had a hold upon him that he dared not
+shake off, he followed him up-stairs, and into the sparely-furnished
+front drawing-room in which the doctor had been lying all through his
+illness.
+
+He was seated where he could see the window, and his handsome face
+looked vacant and strange as he turned his head to Elizabeth, who was
+waiting on him in her mistress's absence.
+
+"Is that Rich?" he said feebly.
+
+"No, doctor, it's me, come for a bit of advice," cried Poynter.  "Here,"
+he said, turning to the maid, as he whisked his handkerchief round his
+hat, "you be off."
+
+Elizabeth left the room, wiping her eyes, and Poynter sat down beside
+the doctor, and shook hands.
+
+"Why, I ought to feel your pulse now, and not you mine," he said
+boisterously.
+
+"Glad to see you, Mr Poynter.  Pretty well, thank you.  Is my Rich
+coming?"
+
+"To be sure she is, old boy.  Now I just want a cosy chat with you about
+Rich."
+
+"About Rich?  Yes, yes."
+
+"You remember how I proposed for her?"
+
+The doctor looked at him blankly; and shook his head.  "Is Rich coming,
+Hendon?" he said.
+
+"Yes, father; she is here," he cried; for there was the sound of wheels;
+and running to the window, he smiled grimly as he saw who descended from
+the cab.
+
+"Might have stopped a little longer," grumbled Poynter to himself.  "It
+don't matter; the game's mine now.  Damn!"
+
+He started from his seat as he saw Rich enter the room, closely followed
+by Mark Heath and Janet, to whom Hendon hurried with outstretched hands,
+and after a little hesitation, two little dark well-mended gloves and
+their contents were placed in his strong grasp.
+
+"Dearest father," said Rich softly, as she hurried to the old man's
+side.
+
+"Ah," he said, taking her hands, and fondling them, while a brighter
+smile came into his pleasant vacant face; "that's better--that's better.
+Here's Mr--Mr--Mr--"
+
+"Poynter, doctor," said that individual, glad of an opportunity to
+remove his eyes from Mark's, which were gazing at him rather inimically.
+
+"Yes, yes, Mr Poynter come to see us, Rich."
+
+"And I have come to see you too, doctor," said Mark.  "You remember me?"
+
+The doctor looked up at him keenly, and then shook his head, and, with a
+troubled look in his eyes.
+
+"No," he said.  "No--no--no."
+
+"Hah!" ejaculated Poynter, with a smile of satisfaction.
+
+"Mark Heath, father dear," said Rich gently, "Don't you remember Mr
+Heath, who went to the Cape?"
+
+"Heath?" said the doctor; "Heath--Heath?  No--no," he added
+thoughtfully.  "Glad to see Mr Heath.  Friend of Hendon's?"  His words
+were calm, but he seemed to wince.
+
+"No, doctor: I'm Hendon's friend," said Poynter, with a laugh; and he
+gave his hat a loving wipe.
+
+"Yes, Mr Poynter.  You came to see me the day before yesterday.  I
+remember--remember.  I prescribed--"
+
+"That's right, sir; that's right," cried Poynter, with one of his horse
+laughs.
+
+"Is this man going, Hendon?" whispered Mark impatiently.
+
+"No, Mr Mark Heath, he ain't," said Poynter fiercely.  "Speak lower if
+you don't want people to hear; we've got sharp ears in the City, and I'm
+not going."
+
+"No, no; Mr Poynter has come to see me," said the doctor, gazing in a
+frightened way at Mark.  "Don't go, Mr Poynter.  It's very dull here."
+
+"I'm not going, doctor.  It's all right," said the unwelcome visitor.
+"You're going to set me right."
+
+"You'll excuse me--Mr Poynter, I think," said Mark; "but I have some
+private business to transact with Dr Chartley."
+
+"Yes, I'll excuse you as much as you like.  I've got private business
+with Doctor Chartley, too."
+
+"Why, Mark," cried Hendon, "have you found out anything about your
+loss?"
+
+"Yes.  No.  Well, yes; I have learned something," cried Mark excitedly,
+and he glanced again angrily at Poynter.
+
+But the latter's unwelcome presence seemed to be ignored by all, in the
+intense excitement of the moment.  For Rich threw herself upon her knees
+at her father's feet, and took his hands.
+
+"Father dear," she said gently, "I want you to try and remember
+something."
+
+"Yes, my dear, yes--certainly, certainly," said the old man, bending
+down to kiss her tenderly.
+
+"That night, you know, when--when you were taken ill."
+
+"Yes, my love, that night I was taken ill?  Was I taken ill?"
+
+"Yes, dear; but you are nearly well now.  Do you remember Mr Heath
+coming?  Try and remember, dear."
+
+Poynter's face grew convulsed and angry, and he seemed to be looking
+about for some moral weapon with which to attack his enemy, but
+contented himself with a whisk of his handkerchief across his hat.
+
+"Heath, dear?  This is Mr Heath, you say--Heath?" and the doctor's face
+grew troubled.
+
+"Yes, yes.  Do you remember his coming to see you?"
+
+The doctor looked from one to the other, and shook his head.
+
+"Oh, father, dear father, for my sake try!" cried Rich.  "Do you not
+remember his coming to you?"
+
+The doctor put his hand to his head, and looked wildly round.
+
+"No," he said at last.  "No, I don't think I have seen Mr Heath
+before;" but the wild look was still in his eyes.
+
+"Don't say that, doctor," said Mark, taking his hand.  "You have
+forgotten.  Don't you remember?  That dreadful foggy night.  I came to
+you, and you let me into the surgery?"
+
+"Yes, dear, you recollect," cried Rich, piteously.
+
+"I was utterly exhausted, and worn out--very much excited," continued
+Mark.  "You took me into the consulting-room, and I lay down upon the
+sofa.  You gave me brandy, and some narcotic."
+
+"Brandy and a narcotic," said the doctor, smiling; "rather a strange
+mixture.  Did I?"
+
+"Yes; you recollect now?" said Mark eagerly.
+
+The doctor looked at him intently, and then at Rich; but ended by
+shaking his head slowly.
+
+"No," he said, "I do not recollect."
+
+"All this is maddening!" muttered Mark, "just when one's hopes were
+reviving, and there was a chance of discovering something.  Doctor," he
+continued excitedly, "try and recollect."
+
+"Yes, dear, for Mark Heath's sake try," continued Rich; and Poynter
+ground his teeth, as he felt what he would give to evoke the same
+interest for himself.
+
+"I will try, my love," said the doctor blandly.  "Of course."
+
+"Then you remember I told you I had just come from the Cape; that I had
+a bag of diamonds in my breast?"
+
+Poynter uttered a sneering laugh, which made Heath wince, and turn upon
+him wrathfully.
+
+"Diamonds? did you say a bag of diamonds?" said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, yes; you remember."
+
+"Was it not a very unsafe place to carry diamonds?"
+
+"Yes, of course it was; but I could trust no one but myself!  You
+remember then, doctor?"
+
+Dr Chartley paused for a few moments, and shook his head again.
+
+"No," he said blandly, "I do not remember.  Diamonds, you say?"
+
+"Yes, yes, diamonds!"
+
+"I hope they were not lost," said the doctor simply.
+
+"Yes; lost, lost!" cried Mark frantically.  "The night you were struck
+down!"
+
+"Here, hold hard!" cried Poynter sharply.  "Look here, Mr Mark Heath,
+you came here that night?"
+
+"Why do you interfere, sir?"
+
+"Never mind.  P'r'aps I know something."
+
+"You know something?"
+
+"P'r'aps so.  You say you came here--late?"
+
+"Yes, very late."
+
+"That night the doctor was struck down?"
+
+"Yes; but why do you ask?"
+
+"Because, you scoundrel, we've got the clue at last.  You were the man!"
+
+So sudden was the charge that Mark literally staggered back, and, weak
+from his illness, he gasped, and looked to a superficial observer as
+much like a guilty man as ever recoiled from a sudden denunciation.  But
+as a wave of the advancing tide merely retires to gain fresh force, Mark
+Heath recovered himself.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he cried; and he would have sprung at Poynter's throat,
+but for the restraining arm of Janet and Hendon.
+
+"Scoundrel yourself!" cried Poynter savagely.  "Look at his face!
+Here--the police!"
+
+He strode towards the door, upon which at that moment there was a loud
+tapping; and before he could reach it, Bob stood in the opening, very
+rough of head, very ragged, and looking as if he had not been washed
+since he was missed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+BOB IS EXPLANATORY.
+
+"Here, boy," cried Poynter, "quick!  Fetch a policeman.  Half-a-crown."
+
+He thrust his hand into his pocket, but at that moment even that
+outrageously large sum had not the slightest effect upon the boy, who
+looked quickly round from one to the other till his eyes lit upon Mark,
+at whom he rushed with the notion of a well-trained dog, seizing him by
+the arm and breast of his coat, and clinging tightly.
+
+"I've got him," he said shrilly.  "Fetch the perlice.  I've got him,
+Miss Rich; I see him come that night."
+
+Poynter raised his fist, and struck it into his open hand.
+
+"I knew it!" he cried.  "I knew I was right!  Now, Mr Mark Heath, what
+have you got to say?"
+
+"Hendon, lad, lay hold of this boy.  He's mad."
+
+"No, I ain't," cried Bob.  "Had 'nuff to make me, though."
+
+"Let go, you dog!" roared Mark.
+
+"All right, I'm a-going to," said the boy, shrinking away as Rich came
+to him.
+
+"Bob," she cried, "what is this you're saying?"
+
+"Well, I d'know, Miss," he said, scratching his head; "and I don't think
+now it weer him.  But I'll sweer he come and told the doctor as the
+perlice or some one was after him."
+
+"Yes, boy, yes; I did come, but you were not there."
+
+"Worn't I?  Yes, I was," said the boy, grinning.  "I see you come, and
+you'd got one o' them, long-tail ulcers and a broad-brimmed hat; and the
+doctor--I say, Miss, is he better?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Bob; but pray go on."
+
+"I am glad the guvner's better.  It scared me.  I thought he was a dead
+'un."
+
+The boy looked round, and gave everybody a confidential nod, including
+"'Lisbeth," who was standing at the door, crying, and smiling with
+satisfaction by turns.
+
+"But you say you saw me come!" cried Mark, while Poynter stood looking
+on in triumph.
+
+"See you come?  Course I did.  I know'd you d'reckly, but I don't think
+it was you as did it."
+
+"No, boy, it was not I.  But where were you?"
+
+"Wheer was I?  Ah! you wouldn't know, I was afraid o' the doctor
+dropping onto me for being there, and I skipped into the bone box."
+
+"What!" cried Hendon.
+
+"I did, sir, 'strue as goodness.  There's lot's o' room, and I could
+just lift up the lid and peep, and that's how I see him come."
+
+"You young rascal?" muttered Hendon; while the doctor sat quietly
+smiling, as if it were something got up for his special amusement.
+
+"Then the doctor he took you into his room, and you had some bran'-water
+hot.  I smelt it.  And when he come and got down one o' the bottles, and
+misked you up a dollop o' physic; and I heared you both a-buzzing away,
+and talking about wheer you'd been.  The doctor kep' coaxing of you,
+like, to go to sleep, and somehow that sent me off."
+
+"What! in that box with those--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I don't mind them.  I often nips in there when any one's
+coming."
+
+"Did you hear anything else, Bob?" said Rich excitedly, as she held the
+boy's hand.
+
+"Not till some one else come, and knocked two or three times; and I was
+going to answer the door, when the doctor come and turned down the gas,
+and then I lay still, and heard him putting the physic bottles away
+afore he'd let 'em in; didn't you, sir?"
+
+The doctor smiled, and shook his head.
+
+"Why, I heared you!" said the boy reproachfully; "and then you turns up
+the gas again, and I lifts the lid a bit, and sees it was two men and an
+accident."
+
+"An accident?"
+
+"Yes, Miss, a chap as they said had been run over; and they brings him
+in, and puts him on the cushion a-top o' the box I was in; and I lay
+still and listens, for I says as it was a good chance to hear a
+operation if I couldn't see one."
+
+"Go on, boy; go on."
+
+"All right, sir.  Well, as I listens--oh, it was good!  The chap groans
+and hollers about his chest, and then he makes no end of fuss, and the
+doctor says he'll soon be all right; and then--_whoosh!--croosh_!  I
+hears as if some one had been hit, and a big fall--_quelch_!  Then I lay
+very still, for I was scared.  I heard some one get off the box, and a
+lot o' whispering and I dursn't move, for fear they should know I was
+there.  But when I did peep, and lifted the lid softly, there was the
+doctor lying close to the box, on his face, and I thought he was dead.
+
+"That give me a turn, Miss," continued the boy, after moistening his
+lips, for his voice had become husky, "and I don't think I knowed what
+happened till I heerd a skeary kind o' noise, and a loud sort o' whop in
+the 'sulting-room; and then the door was opened, and I see the light
+shining on you a-lying on the sofa--you, sir--sleep or shamming, and a
+man in there too, a-lying down, and--and--I--I can't help it, Miss--I
+ain't had much to eat lately, and I--"
+
+Poor Bob let himself sink in a heap upon the floor, covered his face
+with his hands, and burst into a fit of sobbing.
+
+There was another fit of sobbing heard, for grimy-faced Elizabeth rushed
+forward, plumped down beside the boy, and took his head to her breast,
+to rock him to and fro.
+
+"Poor boy!" said Rich softly, and she took his hand.
+
+The touch was like magic; for Bob lifted up his dirty tearful face, all
+smiles.
+
+"It's all right, Miss; I'm on'y a bit upset.  Only let me get into the
+surgery again, and I knows what to take to put me right."
+
+"Can you tell us any more, my lad?" said Mark kindly.
+
+"Course I can, sir; not much, though, for I dunno what come over me.  I
+see them two a-lying about, and as something horrid was the matter, and
+I come over all wet and sick; and then I don't remember any more till I
+seemed to wake up with a headache, and couldn't make out what it all
+meant; and when I could I lifted up the box-lid, and put out my hand,
+and felt to try if it was fancy.  But there was the doctor lying on his
+face, and though all was very quiet, I knowed the other dead un must be
+in the 'sulting-room, and I lay there 'fraid to move, and all of a
+pruspiration."
+
+"Did you hear anything else?" said Rich eagerly.
+
+"Yes, Miss; I heared the window broke, and you come, and the perliceman,
+and I heared all you said; but I dursn't move, for fear the perlicemen
+should think I did it--the perlice is such wunners, you know; and last
+of all, I hears the perliceman begin hunting about, and I got scared
+again, and tried to hide; and jus' as I picks up that there white skull,
+and was trying whether I couldn't get lower, he opens the lid, and bangs
+it down."
+
+"Should you know the men again?" asked Mark eagerly.
+
+"Dunno, sir.  You see it was all foggy like, and they was wropped up;
+but I should know 'em if I heerd 'em speak."
+
+Mark uttered an ejaculation full of disappointment, and signed to the
+boy to go on.
+
+"Well, sir, that's all; only I waited till no one was there; and then I
+lifted the lid and crep out of the box; and it was very horrid, for
+there was the dead chap in the nex' room, and I kep' thinking he'd come
+after me, or them others would; and I was that scared, I crawled along
+the passage, and down-stairs, and then sat and shivered, list'ning to
+you folks talking, and something in my head going buzz."
+
+"Why did you not come to us?" said Rich kindly.
+
+"I did want to, Miss, but I dursn't.  I was 'fraid 'bout what you'd say;
+and there was the perliceman too, and I'd no business to be there.  I
+d'know, only I was very frightened, and didn't hardly know what I did.
+I never see anybody dead afore."
+
+"Well, what did you do then?"
+
+"Waited a bit, Miss, and then I got out in the area, nipped over the
+rails, and went home and told mother."
+
+"But one minute," cried Mark, pressing his hand to his breast; "did
+you--did you hear anything said about--about diamonds?"
+
+"Yes," cried the boy.  "I heared one on 'em say, `Be cool, and the
+diamonds are ours.'"
+
+Mark uttered a groan.  His last hope was crushed; and the boy went on:
+
+"Mother said she know'd no good ud come of my being at a doctor's, and
+that it all meant body-snatching and 'section, and that I shouldn't get
+into trouble for no one.  She said if I stopped I should be took up by
+the perlice; and I was scared enough, and did as she said, and she took
+me with her down in the country."
+
+"In the country?" cried Hendon.  "Where did you go?"
+
+"I d'know," said the boy.  "Everywhere's, I think.  Tramping about, and
+sleeping in workusses; and it's been very cold and mis'able, and I'm
+very fond o' the old woman; only somehow--"
+
+"Well, Bob, why do you stop?" said Hendon.
+
+"Dunno, sir," said the boy, looking very hard at Rich's white hand.  "I
+wouldn't ha' done it, on'y she was took bad, and they put her in one of
+the workas 'firmaries, and wouldn't let me stop along with her.  They
+shoved me in a school as was all whitewash, with a lot more boys; and I
+got in a row with some on 'em, and we had a fight, and the master caned
+me, and I hooked it; and please, Miss, mayn't I stay?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+A JAR WRONGLY LABELLED.
+
+James Poynter blustered and threatened; but the only proceedings he took
+were the sending of threatening letters to Hendon--letters which Mark
+advised him to throw into the fire.
+
+"Wait," said the latter one evening, "and let him develop his attack; we
+should only weaken ourselves by going out to meet him."
+
+"But if he really has claims on my father, and seizes this place?"
+
+"Then, my lad, you and I must set to, and see if it is not possible for
+us to join hands and get together another home for your father and
+sister--one, perhaps, that, if small, might be made happy till I came
+back."
+
+"Came back?" said Janet, who had accompanied her brother to the doctor's
+that evening.
+
+"Yes, dear," said Mark.  "I have not said a word to a soul; but I'm
+going back to the Cape by the next boat."
+
+"To try your luck again?" said Hendon quickly.
+
+"To try my luck again," replied Mark; and he glanced at Rich, who was
+seated at work with Janet, while the doctor looked on, and smiled
+placidly at both in turn.
+
+Rich turned very pale; but she did not speak.
+
+"I have no prospects here," continued Mark; "and out yonder I have faith
+in making some progress.  I shall tempt my fate again."
+
+"And if I could only feel sure that those we left behind would be safe,"
+cried Hendon, "I'd go with you."
+
+Janet's eyes lit up, and it was a look more of encouragement than blame
+which she directed at her lover.
+
+"You, Hendon?" said Mark, smiling.
+
+"Yes; I want to get away, and begin differently.  I'm--there, look here,
+Mark Heath; with a strong-minded chap like you, I know I could get on,
+doctoring or diamond-digging, or something of that kind.  Hallo, what is
+it?"
+
+"Letter, sir."
+
+"Letter?  Why didn't the boy bring it up?"
+
+"He's a-dusting the surgery, sir," replied the maid, who seemed to have
+been engaged upon some cleansing business in which she had been worsted.
+
+"For you, Hendon," said Rich, who had taken the letter.  "Is it from the
+hospital?"
+
+"No, it isn't from the hospital," said Hendon quietly, as he knit his
+brow over the correctly-written formal letter, in which a firm of
+solicitors respectfully informed him that unless certain sums due on
+dishonoured bills were paid to them in a specified time, they were
+instructed by their client, Mr James Poynter, to take immediate
+proceedings for the recovery of the debt.
+
+"Mark, old chap, the attack has begun;" and Hendon handed the letter to
+the former, who read it through.
+
+"Let's go down-stairs," he said.  "I want to talk to you."
+
+"Is anything wrong?" said Janet anxiously.
+
+"Nothing fresh, my dear," replied Mark: "Hendon and I are going to chat
+over matters.  We shall be up again soon."
+
+"But is the news very bad?" said Rich.
+
+"No: on the whole good," replied Mark; and he and Hendon went
+down-stairs, and were going into the dining-room, but the gas was lit in
+the surgery, and they went there, to find Bob going over the bottles,
+and, after a careful polish, putting them back.
+
+"Be off for a bit, my boy," said Hendon; "or--no; go on with your work."
+
+He took a match from a box on a shelf, and lit the consulting-room lamp.
+
+"Here," he said, "room's chilly; we may as well have a pipe over it."
+
+Mark nodded, and they smoked for a few minutes in silence.
+
+"Why did you say that was good news?" said Hendon at last.
+
+"Because the enemy shows his hand."
+
+"Shows his hand?  How?"
+
+"If he had any claim upon your father, he would have attacked him first.
+He has no claim.  It was an empty boast."
+
+"So much the better," cried Hendon.  "Well, that settles it.  I shall go
+off with you."
+
+Mark smoked in silence.
+
+"If you'll have me.  But I say, old fellow, do you quite give up the
+diamonds?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"You said you had been to the police again, yesterday."
+
+"Yes, and they say they think they can lay their hands upon the men when
+they try to sell."
+
+"Well, then, there is hope."
+
+"Not a bit.  They are cooling down.  I don't think they have much faith
+in my story; and, besides, the matter is growing stale.  They have a
+dozen more things on the way.  Hendon, my lad, you love my sister?"
+
+"On my--"
+
+"That will do.  I believe it; but neither you nor I can marry for years
+to come.  You shall go with me, and we will come back well enough off to
+make those two our wives."
+
+"But Poynter's debt?  He'll have me arrested before I can leave the
+country."
+
+"His debt shall be paid."
+
+"Paid?"
+
+"Not in full, but as much as is honestly due to him.  I shall set a
+sensible solicitor to work to make a compromise."
+
+"But the money?  No, no; he will not give up.  This is putting on the
+screw so as to move my sister."
+
+"Whom he will not move," said Mark, smiling with content.  "I suppose
+you are not likely to take up your father's invention?"
+
+"Good gracious, no!  Millington, our big swell, told me, when I
+mentioned it, that it was a craze, and that it was contrary to nature.
+You can't arrest ordinary decay."
+
+"No, of course not; life must go on till it reaches its highest pitch,
+and then decline."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Well, look here, Hendon, Janet and I have a little money between us in
+Consols, and, as we are going to make a fresh start together, we'll do
+so clearly, and your debt shall be paid."
+
+"What, with Janet's money?  Hang it, no!" cried Hendon fiercely; "I'm
+not such a cad as that."
+
+"You are going to be my brother," said Mark, smiling as he slapped him
+on the shoulder, "my younger brother, and you'll do exactly what I bid
+you."
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"That will do.  I see my way clearly now, so let's go up-stairs and have
+a chat with the girls."
+
+Hendon put down his pipe very slowly, and glanced up at a shelf, upon
+which some of the apparatus connected with his father's dreams was
+standing; but it offered him no solution of his difficulties, and he
+followed Mark Heath into the surgery just as Janet and Rich, who were
+unable longer to bear the suspense, came down to press for an
+explanation.
+
+"Here, I say," saluted the party, from Bob, "who's been a-meddlin' with
+these here preparations?"
+
+"What preparations?" said Hendon sharply.
+
+"These here," cried Bob, who had just taken down a large glass jar to
+dust.  "The doctor will be in a way.  He don't like no one to meddle
+with them."
+
+The jar was labelled, like the row from which it had been taken, with a
+gummed-on slip of letter paper, the contents being written in the
+doctor's own bold hand, the ink now yellow with age, and the gummed-on
+label beginning to peel off.
+
+"Put the horrible thing away!" cried Hendon angrily.
+
+"But some 'un's been a-stuffing something else in here as don't belong,"
+cried the boy.  "I knows 'em all by heart.  Look here!"
+
+He thrust his hand into the glass jar, after removing the great stopper.
+
+"What are you doing, boy?" cried Hendon, stepping forward to arrest the
+lad's action, as he drew out, all dripping with the spirit, a
+disgusting-looking swollen object, evidently a portion of the digestive
+viscera of a calf or sheep; but before he could reach him, Mark uttered
+a wild cry, thrust him aside; and, as he snatched the hideous-looking
+object from Bob's hand, the glass jar fell upon the surgery floor, was
+smashed to atoms, and a strong odour of methylated spirit filled the
+place.
+
+"You've done it now!" cried the boy piteously; and then he stared as
+Mark dragged from his pocket a knife, and cut the string of what, in
+place of an anatomical preparation, was a soaked and swollen
+wash-leather bag.
+
+"Look, Rich, look!" cried Mark, dropping the knife, his hands trembling
+with excitement, and his voice so husky and changed that it was hardly
+recognisable.
+
+As he spoke, he thrust Rich back upon the settee, and, with one quick
+motion, poured a couple of handfuls of rough diamonds into her lap.
+
+"Mark!" she cried, as he sank upon his knees before her, and clasped her
+hands; while, in his excitement, Hendon caught Janet in his arms, from
+which she might have extricated herself a little more quickly than she
+did.
+
+"Now just look at that!" said Bob, picking up the bag, which had fallen
+upon the floor.  "Why, it's just like one o' them things as the doctor's
+got saved up.  I say," he continued excitedly, "lookye here, sir,
+there's another one inside."
+
+He drew out of the swollen leather bag a stone as big as a small marble,
+and held it out.
+
+"Yes; and that's yours, my boy," cried Mark excitedly; "whatever it
+fetches shall be for you."
+
+"What! my own?" cried Bob.
+
+"Yes--yes!"
+
+"To do what I like with, sir?"
+
+"Well, it shall be applied for your benefit, my lad."
+
+"Then I wants some on it now!" cried the boy excitedly.
+
+"What for?" said Rich.
+
+"To get my old ooman home."
+
+"And I want one, Mark," cried Hendon.
+
+"Yes," said Mark; "to pay James Poynter's debt."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+KNOTTING UP LOOSE THREADS.
+
+It had been the doctor's last act before he admitted his assailants.  As
+if inspired by a fear that his patient's excited utterances might be
+true, and urged by the risk of leaving so valuable a treasure
+unprotected, he had taken the bag, and slipped it in a place not likely
+to be examined, though he never recovered sufficiently to recall what he
+had done.
+
+As to the two men who had visited the surgery that night, by a strange
+want of scent on the part of the sleuth-hounds of the law they were
+never found; one reason being that, with the cash they found in the belt
+Mark Heath wore, they had made their way back to the Cape.
+
+The house in Ramillies Street remained unchanged in aspect so that after
+a time, under the old doctor's name, a new plate was affixed, bearing
+that of his son.
+
+The red light shone out every night, and the plate upon the door
+glistened in the sunshine, such little as came into the street, after
+Bob had been over the said plates with rotten-stone and oil, prior to
+"cleaning hisself," as he called it, and donning his new smart livery,
+ready to admit the patients who came; but though James Poynter was often
+really sick, he sought advice there no more.
+
+That red light shone out every night with a dull glare across the road;
+but whenever as ordinary constable, or later on as sergeant, John
+Whyley's duties took him round that way, he always stopped, and rolled
+his head in his stock with a sapient shake.
+
+"Ah!" he invariably said; "that there just was fog!"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Bag of Diamonds, by George Manville Fenn
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