magine the horror and loathing with which he looked back on those
two months in the sanatorium.

Next day, however, he came to her quite meekly.

"Just give me that doctor chap's address in Stresa, will you?" he said.
"This damnable leg is getting too much for me."

Dr. Camenis wanted Chesney to go to bed for forty-eight hours and take
large doses of salicylate of soda. Chesney said that he would take the
stuff, but refused to go to bed.

"In that case, Signore," said Camenis firmly, "I cannot prescribe
salicylate of sodium. It produces heavy perspiration. You would probably
increase this attack of sciatica."

Chesney said very well, to give him the prescription and he'd promise
not to take it unless he went to bed for two days.

He had gone to Stresa that day by one of the Lake Steamers. By the time
he returned to Intra, he was in severe pain. Camenis had said that he
could suggest no palliative but opium in some form, and he was averse
from prescribing anodynes except in extreme cases. As he came up the
slant of the embarcadero, Chesney had actual difficulty in walking. His
face was flushed with that drilling anguish in his sciatic nerve. He
limped across to the Piazza. At once the _vetturini_ waiting there on
the boxes of their rusty little traps began to hail him. One red-faced,
grey-eyed fellow shouted out:

"_He!_ Meester! I drive you Villa Bianca--_ne_?"

But Chesney, leaning heavily on his stick, had his eyes fixed on a sign
that ran along the front of a shop just across the way. "_Farmacia
Lavatelli_," it read. His heart was thumping hard with a bolt-like
thought that had just struck him. He had set his teeth. The vetturino,
his scampish grey eyes looking white like glass in his dark-red face,
drove nearer.

"I drive you at Villa Bianca quveek, sir," he said. "I spik Engleesh.
Liva Noo York two year. I name John. You wanta me drive you, _ne_?"

Chesney glanced around with a start; then clambered painfully into the
_carrozzella_.

The man gave his old screw a flick, it started forward in a gallant
shamble.

"Hold on!" cried Chesney.

The vetturino nearly drew the poor nag onto its haunches.

"_He?_ What's it?" he asked.

Chesney pointed with his stick at Lavatelli's sign.

"Is that a good chemist's?" he asked.

"_He?_" said the vetturino, glancing where the stick pointed. "You say
Lavatelli--is he good?"

"Yes," said Chesney.

"Veree good," said John cheerfully. "Lavatelli he all right.