ise
with his tongue as he glanced at it.

"Both legs?"

"No, only one."

"Suddenly?"

"This morning."

"Hum."

The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb down the line
of his chin. "Can you account for it?" he asked briskly.

"No."

A trace of sternness came into the large brown eyes.

"I need not point out to you that unless the most absolute
frankness----"

The patient sprang from his chair. "So help me God!" he cried, "I have
nothing in my life with which to reproach myself. Do you think that I
would be such a fool as to come here and tell you lies. Once for all,
I have nothing to regret." He was a pitiful, half-tragic and
half-grotesque figure, as he stood with one trouser leg rolled to the
knee, and that ever present horror still lurking in his eyes. A burst
of merriment came from the card-players in the next room, and the two
looked at each other in silence.

"Sit down," said the doctor abruptly, "your assurance is quite
sufficient." He stooped and ran his finger down the line of the young
man's shin, raising it at one point. "Hum, serpiginous," he murmured,
shaking his head. "Any other symptoms?"

"My eyes have been a little weak."

"Let me see your teeth." He glanced at them, and again made the
gentle, clicking sound of sympathy and disapprobation.

"Now your eye." He lit a lamp at the patient's elbow, and holding a
small crystal lens to concentrate the light, he threw it obliquely upon
the patient's eye. As he did so a glow of pleasure came over his large
expressive face, a flush of such enthusiasm as the botanist feels when
he packs the rare plant into his tin knapsack, or the astronomer when
the long-sought comet first swims into the field of his telescope.

"This is very typical--very typical indeed," he murmured, turning to
his desk and jotting down a few memoranda upon a sheet of paper.
"Curiously enough, I am writing a monograph upon the subject. It is
singular that you should have been able to furnish so well-marked a
case." He had so forgotten the patient in his symptom, that he had
assumed an almost congratulatory air towards its possessor. He
reverted to human sympathy again, as his patient asked for particulars.

"My dear sir, there is no occasion for us to go into strictly
professional details together," said he soothingly. "If, for example,
I were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be
the wiser? There are indications of