spent several busy
hours going in and out of the houses where the sufferers lay. It was
not till a quarter past eleven that he returned to his home and the town
settled down for the night. At half-past eleven--long after the legal
closing hour--Sergeant Rahilly was sitting with Mr. Flanagan in the room
behind the shop. A bottle of whisky and a jug of water were on the table
in front of them.

"It's a queer thing now about that doctor," said Flanagan. "After what
Dr. Farelly said to me I made dead sure he'd be pleased to find fairies
about the place. But he was not. When I told him it was fairies he
looked like a man that wanted to curse and didn't rightly know how. But
sure the English is all queer, and the time you'd think you have them
pleased is the very time they'd be most vexed with you."

IV. A LUNATIC AT LARGE

It was Tuesday, a Tuesday early in October, Dr. Lovaway finished his
breakfast quietly, conscious that he had a long morning before him and
nothing particular to do. Tuesday is a quiet day in Dunailin; Wednesday
is market day and people are busy, the doctor as well as everybody else.
Young women who come into town with butter to sell take the opportunity
of having their babies vaccinated on Wednesday. Old women, with baskets
on their arms, find it convenient on that day to ask the doctor for
something to rub into knee-joints where rheumatic pains are troublesome.
Old men, who have ridden into town on their donkeys, consult the doctor
about chronic coughs, and seek bottles likely to relieve "an impression
on the chest."

Fridays, when the Petty Sessions' Court sits, are almost as busy. Mr.
Timothy Flanagan, a magistrate in virtue of the fact that he is Chairman
of the Urban District Council, administers justice of a rude and
uncertain kind in the Court House. While angry litigants are settling
their business there, and repentant drunkards are paying the moderate
fines imposed on them, their wives ask the doctor for advice about the
treatment of whooping cough or the best way of treating a child which
has incautiously stepped into a fire. Fair days, which occur once a
month, are the busiest days of all. Everyone is in town on fair days,
and every kind of ailment is brought to the doctor. Towards evening
he has to put stitches into one or two cut scalps and sometimes set a
broken limb. On Mondays and Thursdays the doctor sits in his office for
an hour or two to register births and deaths.

But Tue