ho is your friend," said Dwining;
"had you yielded to a rash impulse, and said, 'Slay me this worthless
quacksalver,' where, within the four seas of Britain, would you have
found the man to have ministered to you as much comfort?"

"Forget my threats, good leech," said Ramorny, "and beware how you tempt
me. Such as I brook not jests upon our agony. See thou keep thy scoffs,
to pass upon misers [that is, miserable persons, as used in Spenser and
other writers of his time, though the sense is now restricted to those
who are covetous] in the hospital."

Dwining ventured to say no more, but poured some drops from a phial
which he took from his pocket into a small cup of wine allayed with
water.

"This draught," said the man of art, "is medicated to produce a sleep
which must not be interrupted."

"For how long will it last?" asked the knight.

"The period of its operation is uncertain--perhaps till morning."

"Perhaps for ever," said the patient. "Sir mediciner, taste me that
liquor presently, else it passes not my lips."

The leech obeyed him, with a scornful smile. "I would drink the whole
with readiness; but the juice of this Indian gum will bring sleep on the
healthy man as well as upon the patient, and the business of the leech
requires me to be a watcher."

"I crave your pardon, sir leech," said Ramorny, looking downwards, as if
ashamed to have manifested suspicion.

"There is no room for pardon where offence must not be taken," answered
the mediciner. "An insect must thank a giant that he does not tread on
him. Yet, noble knight, insects have their power of harming as well as
physicians. What would it have cost me, save a moment's trouble, so to
have drugged that balm, as should have made your arm rot to the shoulder
joint, and your life blood curdle in your veins to a corrupted jelly?
What is there that prevented me to use means yet more subtle, and to
taint your room with essences, before which the light of life twinkles
more and more dimly, till it expires, like a torch amidst the foul
vapours of some subterranean dungeon? You little estimate my power, if
you know not that these and yet deeper modes of destruction stand
at command of my art. But a physician slays not the patient by whose
generosity he lives, and far less will he the breath of whose nostrils
is the hope of revenge destroy the vowed ally who is to favour his
pursuit of it. Yet one word; should a necessity occur for rousing
yourself--for w