showed that the leech had been busy in his craft, a tall thin
form lay on a bed, arrayed in a nightgown belted around him, with
pain on his brow, and a thousand stormy passions agitating his bosom.
Everything in the apartment indicated a man of opulence and of expense.
Henbane Dwining, the apothecary, who seemed to have the care of the
patient, stole with a crafty and catlike step from one corner of the
room to another, busying himself with mixing medicines and preparing
dressings. The sick man groaned once or twice, on which the leech,
advancing to his bedside, asked whether these sounds were a token of the
pain of his body or of the distress of his mind.

"Of both, thou poisoning varlet," said Sir John Ramorny, "and of being
encumbered with thy accursed company."

"If that is all, I can relieve your knighthood of one of these ills
by presently removing myself elsewhere. Thanks to the feuds of this
boisterous time, had I twenty hands, instead of these two poor servants
of my art (displaying his skinny palms), there is enough of employment
for them--well requited employment, too, where thanks and crowns contend
which shall best pay my services; while you, Sir John, wreak upon your
chirurgeon the anger you ought only to bear against the author of your
wound."

"Villain, it is beneath me to reply to thee," said the patient; "but
every word of thy malignant tongue is a dirk, inflicting wounds which
set all the medicines of Arabia at defiance."

"Sir John, I understand you not; but if you give way to these
tempestuous fits of rage, it is impossible but fever and inflammation
must be the result."

"Why then dost thou speak in a sense to chafe my blood? Why dost thou
name the supposition of thy worthless self having more hands than
nature gave thee, while I, a knight and gentleman, am mutilated like a
cripple?"

"Sir John," replied the chirurgeon, "I am no divine, nor a mainly
obstinate believer in some things which divines tell us. Yet I may
remind you that you have been kindly dealt with; for if the blow which
has done you this injury had lighted on your neck, as it was aimed, it
would have swept your head from your shoulders, instead of amputating a
less considerable member."

"I wish it had, Dwining--I wish it had lighted as it was addressed. I
should not then have seen a policy which had spun a web so fine as mine
burst through by the brute force of a drunken churl. I should not have
been reserved to see horses