"Troublesome to talk, hey?" asked Pratt, observing that he seemed faint, and talked low and with effort.

"No--yes--that is, _tired_."

"I see, no pain; all nicely fixed in the toe; _that_ could not be better, and what do you refer it to? By Jove, it's eighteen, _nineteen_ months since your last! When you came down to Dartbroke, for the Easter, you know, and wrote to me for the thing with the ether, hey? You've been at that d--d bin, I'm afraid, the forbidden fruit, hey? Egad, sir, I call it fluid gout, and the crust nothing but chalk-stone."

"_No--I haven't_," croaked the Baronet savagely.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Doctor, drumming on his fat knee with his stethoscope. "Won't admit--won't allow, hey?" As he spoke he was attempting to take him by the wrist.

"Pulse? How are we there, eh?"

"Turn that d--d fellow out of the room, and bolt the door, will you?"

muttered Sir Jekyl, impatiently.

"Hey? I see. How are _you_, Mr. Tomlinson--no return of that bronchial annoyance, eh? I'll ask you just now--we'll just make Sir Jekyl Marlowe a little more comfortable first, and I've a question or two--we'd be as well alone, you see--and do you mind? You'll be in the way, you know; we may want you, you know."

So the docile Tomlinson withdrew with a noiseless alacrity, and Doctor Pratt, in deference to his patron, bolted the mangled door.

"See, Pratt, you're tiring me to death, with your beastly questions.

Wait, will you? Sit down. You'll promise me you won't tell this to anyone."

"What?"

"Do hold your tongue, like a dear fellow, and listen. Upon your honour, you don't tell, till I give you leave, what's the matter with me.

Come--d---- you; yes or no?"

"Well, you know I must, if you insist; but I'd rayther not."

"You _must_. On your honour you won't tell, and you'll call it gout?"

"Why--why, if it _is_ not gout, eh? don't you see? it would not _do_."

"Well, good morning to you, Doctor Pratt, for I'm hanged if you prescribe for me on any other terms."

"Well, don't you see, I say I must, if you insist, don't you see; it may be--it may be--egad! it might be very serious to let you wait."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I _do_. _There!_"

"Gout, mind, and nothing else; all gout, upon your honour."

"Aw, well! _Yes._"

"Upon your _honour_; why the devil can't you speak!"

"Upon my honour, of course."

"You kill me, making me talk. Well, 'tisn't in the toe--it's up here,"

and he uncovered his right shoulder and chest, showing some handkerchiefs and his night-shirt soaked in blood.

"What the devil's all this?" exclaimed the Doctor, rising suddenly, and the ruddy tints of his face fading into a lilac hue. "Why--why, you're _hurt_; egad, you're hurt. We must examine it. What is it with--how the plague did it all come about?"

"The act of G.o.d," answered Sir Jekyl, with a faint irony in his tone.

"The--ah!--well, I don't understand."

"I mean the purest accident."

"Bled a lot, egad! These things seem pretty dry--bleeding away _still_?

You must not keep it so hot--the sheet only."

"I think it's stopped--the things are sticking--I feel them."

"So much the better; but we must not leave it this way--and--and I daren't disturb it, you know, without help, so we'll have to take Tomlinson into confidence."

"'Gad, you'll do no such thing."

"But, my dear sir, I _must_ tell you, this thing, whatever it is, looks very serious. I can _tell_ you, it's not to be trifled with, and this sort of nonsense may be as much as your life's worth, egad."

"You shan't," said Sir Jekyl.

"You'll allow me to speak with your brother?"

"No, you shan't."

"Ho, now, Sir Jekyl, really now--"

"Promised--your honour."

"'Tisn't a fair position," said the pract.i.tioner, shaking his head, with his hands stuffed in his pockets, and staring dismally at the blood-stained linen. "I'll tell you what we must do--there are two supernumeraries I happen to know at the county hospital, and Hicks is a capital nurse. I'll write a line and they'll send her here. There's a room in there, eh? yes, well, she can be quartered _there_, and talk with no one but you and me; in fact, see no one except in your presence, don't you see? and egad, we _must_ have her, or I'll give up the _case_."

"Well, yes; send for her."

CHAPTER XXV.

The Patient interrogated.

So Doctor Pratt scribbled a few lines on the back of his card, and Tomlinson was summoned to the door, and told to expedite its despatch, and "send one of the men in a dog-cart as hard as he could peg, and to be sure to see Doctor Hoggins," who had been an apprentice once of honest Pratt's.

"Tell her not to wait for dressing, or packing, or anything. She'll come just as she is, and we'll send again for her things, d'ye mind? and let him drive quick. It's only two miles, he must not be half an hour about it;" and in a low whisper, with a frown and a nod, he added to Tomlinson on the lobby, "I _want_ her here."

So he sat down very grave by Sir Jekyl, and took his pulse, very low and inflammatory, he thought.

"You lost a good deal of blood? It is not all here, eh?"