nscience tells me to save him, although I think it best that he should
die. Therefore the law is not ridiculous. Pleasant dilemma--the
impossible case! The law is at the same time ridiculous and not
ridiculous. The question is, does the law deduce itself from conscience,
or is conscience the direct result of existing law?"

The squire appeared to be in a strangely moralising mood, and John
listened to him with some surprise. He could not understand that the good
man was talking to persuade himself, and to concentrate his faculties,
which had been almost unbalanced by the events of the evening.

"I think," said John with remarkable good sense, "that the instinct of
man is to preserve life when he is calm. When a man is fighting with
another he is hot and tries to kill his enemy; when the fight is over,
the natural instinct returns."

"The only thing worth knowing in such cases is the precise point at which
the fight may be said to be over. I once knew a young surgeon in India
who thought he had killed a cobra and proceeded to extract the fangs in
order to examine the poison. Unfortunately the snake was not quite dead;
he bit the surgeon in the finger and the poor fellow died in
thirty-five minutes."

"Dreadful!" said John. "But you do not think this poor fellow could do
anything very dangerous now--do you?"

"Oh, dear me, no!" returned the squire. "I was only stating a case to
prove that one is sometimes justified in going quite to the end of a
fight. No indeed! He will not be dangerous for some time, if he ever is
again. But, as I was saying, he must have been ill some time. Delirium
never comes on in this way, so soon--"

Some one knocked at the door. It was Holmes, who came to say that the
physician, Doctor Longstreet, had arrived.

"Oh--it is Doctor Longstreet is it?" said the squire. "Ask him to come
up."

CHAPTER XXI.

Doctor Longstreet was not the freethinking physician of Billingsfield.
The latter was out when Mr. Juxon's groom went in search of him, and the
man had driven on to the town, six miles away. The doctor was an old man
with a bright eye, a deeply furrowed forehead, a bald head and clean
shaved face. He walked as though his frame were set together with springs
and there was a curious snapping quickness in his speech. He seemed full
of vitality and bore his years with a jaunty air of merriment which
inspired confidence, for he seemed perpetually laughing at the ills of
the flesh and re