are four-and-twenty young men, in white
cravats, making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly
accountants, posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the
Pill in three enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and
autograph, expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded in flowing
letters, by the motto of the establishment, 'Down with the Doctors!'
Even Mrs. Wragge contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise.
She is the celebrated woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies
from every complaint under the sun. Her portrait is engraved on all the
wrappers, with the following inscription beneath it: 'Before she took
the Pill you might have blown this patient away with a feather. Look at
her now!!!' Last, not least, my dear girl, the Pill is the cause of my
finding my way to this house. My department in the prodigious Enterprise
already mentioned is to scour the United Kingdom in a gig, establishing
Agencies everywhere. While founding one of those Agencies, I heard of a
certain friend of mine, who had lately landed in England, after a long
sea-voyage. I got his address in London--he was a lodger in this house.
I called on him forthwith, and was stunned by the news of your illness.
Such, in brief, is the history of my existing connection with British
Medicine; and so it happens that you see me at the present moment
sitting in the present chair, now as ever, yours truly, Horatio Wragge."
In these terms the captain brought his personal statement to a close. He
looked more and more attentively at Magdalen, the nearer he got to the
conclusion. Was there some latent importance attaching to his last words
which did not appear on the face of them? There was. His visit to the
sick-room had a serious object, and that object he had now approached.

In describing the circumstances under which he had become acquainted
with Magdalen's present position, Captain Wragge had skirted, with his
customary dexterity, round the remote boundaries of truth. Emboldened
by the absence of any public scandal in connection with Noel Vanstone's
marriage, or with the event of his death as announced in the newspaper
obituary, the captain, roaming the eastern circuit, had ventured back to
Aldborough a fortnight since, to establish an agency there for the sale
of his wonderful Pill. No one had recognized him but the landlady of
the hotel, who at once insisted on his entering the house and reading
Kirk