"An interesting case, isn't it?" he
remarked.

"You were called into consultation by Mr. Null," Ovid continued; "and
you approved of his ignorant treatment--you, who knew better."

"I should think I did!" Benjulia rejoined.

"You deliberately encouraged an incompetent man; you let that poor girl
go on from bad to worse--for some vile end of your own."

Benjulia good-naturedly corrected him. "No, no. For an excellent
end--for knowledge."

"If I fail to remedy the mischief, which is your doing, and yours
alone--"

Benjulia took his pipe out of his mouth. "How do you mean to cure her?"
he eagerly interposed. "Have you got a new idea?"

"If I fail," Ovid repeated, "her death lies at your door. You merciless
villain--as certainly as that moon is now shining over us, your life
shall answer for hers."

Astonishment--immeasurable astonishment--sealed Benjulia's lips. He
looked down the lane when Ovid left him, completely stupefied. The one
imaginable way of accounting for such language as he had heard--spoken
by a competent member of his own profession!--presented the old familiar
alternative. "Drunk or mad?" he wondered while he lit his pipe again.
Walking back to the house, his old distrust of Ovid troubled him once
more. He decided to call at Teresa's lodgings in a day or two, and
ascertain from the landlady (and the chemist) how Carmina was being
cured.

Returning to the high road, Ovid was passed by a tradesman, driving his
cart towards London. The man civilly offered to take him as far as the
nearest outlying cabstand.

Neither the landlady nor Teresa had gone to their beds when he returned.
Their account of Carmina, during his absence, contained nothing to alarm
him. He bade them goodnight--eager to be left alone in his room.

In the house and out of the house, there was now the perfect silence
that helps a man to think. His mind was clear; his memory answered, when
he called on it to review that part of his own medical practice which
might help him, by experience, in his present need. But he shrank--with
Carmina's life in his hands--from trusting wholly to himself. A higher
authority than his was waiting to be consulted. He took from his
portmanteau the manuscript presented to him by the poor wretch, whose
last hours he had soothed in the garret at Montreal.

The work opened with a declaration which gave it a special value, in
Ovid's estimation.

"If this imperfect record of experience is ever read by