ine specimen upon whose excellences the
doctor had before now lectured to students, and steadying the skull, the
boy pretended to engage in a terrible struggle; then gave a quick
twitch, and brought out the tooth, which he held with a smile as he
struck an attitude before its silent owner.

The boy had seemed goblin-like before, but as he now stood there before
the glistening relic of mortality, over which he had partly thrown the
corner of the table-cloth, the scene was weird and grim in the extreme;
for the one uncovered eye-socket seemed to leer at him in company with a
ghastly pride, as if rejoicing at the relief the operation had afforded.

"Now yer better, ain't yer?" said Bob. "Eh? Ah, I thought you would
be. He was a tight 'un. Some 'un coming."

Quick as thought, the boy snatched the skull from the back of the chair,
slipped it into the long chest, closed the lid, thrust the tooth-key
back into the drawer, and had thrown the cover on the table before the
door at the end of the house-passage was opened, disclosing him, in
spite of all his efforts, looking as if the mischief which lurked in the
corners of his mouth, and flashed from his eyes, had been running to the
full extent of its chain.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

AGONY POINT.

"Is that all? What a fuss over a little pain!" What many would say to
a suffering friend when sound and well themselves. What Richmond
Chartley was ready to say to herself as she paced the room, with one
hand pressed to her face, where the agonising pain seemed to start as a
centre, and then ramify in jerks through every nerve.

Toothache, face-ache, neuralgia, according to fashion, but maddening all
the same. A pain born of care and anxiety, close confinement,
abstinence, the damp unchanging foggy air, and settled in the face of a
heroine, to take, as it were, all the romance of her history.

But there it was all the same, fiercely stabbing, jerking, as if some
virulent little demon were holding ends of the facial nerves in a pair
of pincers, and waiting till the sufferer was a little calm for a few
moments before giving the nerve a savage jig.

After the tug a pause of sickening agony, and then that slow, red-hot
suffering again, as if a blunt augur was being made to form a channel
beneath the teeth, so that the aching pains, as of hot lead, might run
round without let or hindrance.

Neuralgia, with sleepless nights; neuralgia, with Hendon Chartley's
progress at the hos