itted as much to me. Asthma was such a funny thing
(he insisted) that it would not worry him a bit to discover that I had
come to take the presents instead of to take care of them! I showed a
sufficiently faint appreciation of the jest. And it was presently
punished as it deserved, by the most violent paroxysm that had seized
the sufferer yet: the fight for breath became faster and more furious,
and the former weapons of no more avail. I prepared a cigarette, but
the poor brute was too breathless to inhale. I poured out yet more
whiskey, but he put it from him with a gesture.

"Amyl--get me amyl!" he gasped. "The tin on the table by my bed."

I rushed into his room, and returned with a little tin of tiny
cylinders done up like miniature crackers in scraps of calico; the
spent youth broke one in his handkerchief, in which he immediately
buried his face. I watched him closely as a subtle odor reached my
nostrils; and it was like the miracle of oil upon the billows. His
shoulders rested from long travail; the stertorous gasping died away to
a quick but natural respiration; and in the sudden cessation of the
cruel contest, an uncanny stillness fell upon the scene. Meanwhile the
hidden face had flushed to the ears, and, when at length it was raised
to mine, its crimson calm was as incongruous as an optical illusion.

"It takes the blood from the heart," he murmured, "and clears the whole
show for the moment. If it only lasted! But you can't take two
without a doctor; one's quite enough to make you smell the brimstone...
I say, what's up? You're listening to something! If it's the policeman
we'll have a word with him."

It was not the policeman; it was no out-door sound that I had caught in
the sudden cessation of the bout for breath. It was a noise, a
footstep, in the room below us. I went to the window and leaned out:
right underneath, in the conservatory, was the faintest glimmer of a
light in the adjoining room.

"One of the rooms where the presents are!" whispered Medlicott at my
elbow. And as we withdrew together, I looked him in the face as I had
not done all night.

I looked him in the face like an honest man, for a miracle was to make
me one once more. My knot was cut--my course inevitable. Mine, after
all, to prevent the very thing that I had come to do! My gorge had long
since risen at the deed; the unforeseen circumstances had rendered it
impossible from the first; but now I could afford to rec