sir, and take a sup of this." My mother was rejoicing
over me on one side of the bed; and the unknown gentleman, addressed as
"doctor," was offering me a spoonful of whisky-and-water on the other.
He called it the "elixir of life"; and he bid me remark (speaking in
a strong Scotch accent) that he tasted it himself to show he was in
earnest.

The stimulant did its good work. My head felt less giddy, my mind became
clearer. I could speak collectedly to my mother; I could vaguely recall
the more marked events of the previous evening. A minute or two more,
and the image of the person in whom those events had all centered became
a living image in my memory. I tried to raise myself in the bed; I
asked, impatiently, "Where is she?"

The doctor produced another spoonful of the elixir of life, and gravely
repeated his first address to me.

"Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this."

I persisted in repeating my question:

"Where is she?"

The doctor persisted in repeating his formula:

"Take a sup of this."

I was too weak to contest the matter; I obeyed. My medical attendant
nodded across the bed to my mother, and said, "Now, he'll do." My mother
had some compassion on me. She relieved my anxiety in these plain words:

"The lady has quite recovered, George, thanks to the doctor here."

I looked at my professional colleague with a new interest. He was the
legitimate fountainhead of the information that I was dying to have
poured into my mind.

"How did you revive her?" I asked. "Where is she now?"

The doctor held up his hand, warning me to stop.

"We shall do well, sir, if we proceed systematically," he began, in a
very positive manner. "You will understand, that every time you open
your mouth, it will be to take a sup of this, and not to speak. I shall
tell you, in due course, and the good lady, your mother, will tell you,
all that you have any need to know. As I happen to have been first on
what you may call the scene of action, it stands in the fit order of
things that I should speak first. You will just permit me to mix a
little more of the elixir of life, and then, as the poet says, my plain
unvarnished tale I shall deliver."

So he spoke, pronouncing in his strong Scotch accent the most carefully
selected English I had ever heard. A hard-headed, square-shouldered,
pertinaciously self-willed man--it was plainly useless to contend with
him. I turned to my mother's gentle face for encouragement; and I le