had come in,
and after a little talk was sitting silent at the opposite corner of the
chimney-piece.

'Doctor,' said Andrew, seizing the opportunity, 'you've been very kind
to me, and I don't know how to thank you, but it is time I was going.
I am quite well now. Would you kindly order the nurse to bring me my
clothes to-morrow morning, and I will go.'

This he said with the quavering voice of one who speaks because he
has made up his mind to speak. A certain something, I believe a vague
molluscous form of conscience, made him wriggle and shift uneasily upon
his chair as he spoke.

'No, no,' said Robert, 'you are not fit to go. Make yourself
comfortable, my dear sir. There is no reason why you should go.'

'There is something I don't understand about it. I want to go.'

'It would ruin my character as a professional man to let a patient in
your condition leave the house. The weather is unfavourable. I cannot--I
must not consent.'

'Where am I? I don't understand it. I want to understand it.'

'Your friends wish you to remain where you are for the present.'

'I have no friends.'

'You have one, at least, who puts his house here at your service.'

'There's something about it I don't like. Do you suppose I am incapable
of taking care of myself?'

'I do indeed,' answered his son with firmness.

'Then you are quite mistaken,' said Andrew, angrily. 'I am quite well
enough to go, and have a right to judge for myself. It is very kind of
you, but I am in a free country, I believe.'

'No doubt. All honest men are free in this country. But--'

He saw that his father winced, and said no more. Andrew resumed, after a
pause in which he had been rousing his feeble drink-exhausted anger,

'I tell you I will not be treated like a child. I demand my clothes and
my liberty.'

'Do you know where you were found that night you were brought here?'

'No. But what has that to do with it? I was ill. You know that as well
as I.'

'You are ill now because you were lying then on the wet ground under a
railway-arch--utterly incapable from the effects of opium, or drink,
or both. You would have been taken to the police-station, and would
probably have been dead long before now, if you had not been brought
here.'

He was silent for some time. Then he broke out,

'I tell you I will go. I do not choose to live on charity. I will not. I
demand my clothes.'

'I tell you it is of no use. When you are well enough to go out you
sh