e telling, would be to do him but mild
justice. The doctor, accustomed to his kind changed into wild animals by
pain, only laughed. And then that Hagenback of his profession wrote upon
a piece of paper this:

[Handwriting: illegible prescription]

There is no definiteness to this account. There is no relevance between
time and occurrences, save in a vague, general way. A month would cover
all the tale, but there are lapses. Markham suffered steadily, but not
so patiently as would have done another man. The doctor visited him
regularly, and they had difficulties such as will occur between men
learning to understand each other pretty well, and so risking all
debate. Two other prescriptions the doctor made, and these were all, not
counting repetitions at the druggists. These two prescriptions, one,
another ineffectual sedative, so great was the man's suffering, and the
other but a segment of the medical program looking toward a cure, may be
dropped into the matter casually.

So the man sick with what makes strong men yield, struggled and
suffered, until there came to him one day a man of color. Black as the
conventional ace of spades was this man, and most impudent of
expression, but he bore a note from Her. She had known him formerly but
as a serving man in a boarding-house, but he had told to another
servant, in her hearing, of how he had been engaged for years in a
Turkish bath, and how he had cured a certain great man of rheumatism.
She had remembered it, and had summoned this person of deep color that
she might send him to the man she loved. There are a number of men in
the world who can imagine what this messenger was to Markham under such
circumstances! What to any healthy and healthful man is evidence of
thinking about and for him from the one woman!

He questioned the visitor. He learned that he was at present a
professional prize-fighter, most of the time out of an engagement. His
appearance tended to establish his veracity in this particular instance.
He looked like a thug and looked like a person out of employment for a
long time.

What could he do? was demanded of the messenger. Well, he could "cure de
rheumatism, shuah." How would he do it? He would "take de gemman to a
Turkish bath and rub him and put some stuff on him."

Of course Markham was going to try the remedy. He would have tried a
prescription of sleeping all night on wet grass under a upas tree, if
such a remedy for rheumatism had come from