ver his fear that
his lenience for the sins and follies of his Chamberlain would some day
suffer too hard a strain, and lead to that severance that in the case of
old friends and familiars was his Grace's singular terror in life.

The day passed heavily for Argyll. Many a time he looked out of his
window into the fosse slow drifting full of snow; and though he could
not from that point see the cell-door of his prisoner, his fancy did
enough to feed his unhappiness. Vainly he paced his library, vainly
sought the old anodyne--the blessed anodyne of books; he was consumed
with impatience to consult with his wife, and she, fragile always, and
fatigued by last evening's gaieties, was still asleep.

He went for the twentieth time into the room where the Chamberlain was
lying. The doctor, a lank, pock-pitted embodiment of mad chirurgy from
books and antique herbal delusions inherited from generations of simple
healers, mixed noxious stuff in a gallipot and plumed himself upon
some ounces of gore drawn from his victim. Clysters he prated on;
electuaries; troches; the weed that the Gael of him called _slanlus_ or
"heal-all;" of unguents loathsomely compounded, but at greatest length
and with fullest rapture of his vile phlebotomy.

"Six ounces, your Grace!" he cried gleefully, in a laughable high
falsetto, holding up the bowl with trembling fingers as if he proffered
for the ducal cheer the very flagon of Hebe.

Argyll shuddered.

"I wish to God, Dr. Madver," said he, "your practice in this matter of
blood-letting may not be so much infernal folly. Why! the man lost all
he could spare before he reached you."

And there, unconscious, Simon MacTaggart slept, pale as parchment,
fallen in at the jaw, twitching a little now and then at the corners of
the mouth, otherwise inert and dead. Never before had his master seen
him off his guard--never, that is to say, without the knowledge that he
was being looked at--and if his Grace had expected that he should find
any grosser man than he knew revealed, he was mistaken. 'Twas a child
that slept--a child not unhappy, at most only indifferent to
everything with that tremendous naivete of the dead and of the soundly
sleeping--that great carelessness that comes upon the carcass when
the soul's from home. If he had sinned a million times,--let the
physiognomists say what they will!--not a line upon his face betrayed
him, for there the ideals only leave their mark, and his were forever
im