SCOTT SEAGRAVE."

Which telegram to Josiah Bailey, M.D., started that eminent general
practitioner toward Roya-Neh in company with young Dr. Goss, a surgeon
whose brilliancy and skill did not interfere with his self-restraint
when there were two ways of doing things.

They were to meet in an hour at the 5.07 train; but before Dr. Bailey
set out for the rendezvous, and while his man was still packing his
suit-case, the physician returned to his office, where a patient waited,
head hanging, picking nervously at his fingers, his prominent, watery
eyes fixed on vacancy.

The young man neither looked up nor stirred when the doctor entered and
reseated himself, picking up a pencil and pad. He thought a moment,
squinted through his glasses, and continued writing the prescription
which the receipt of the telegram from Roya-Neh had interrupted.

When he had finished he glanced over the slip of paper, removed his
gold-rimmed reading spectacles, folded them, balanced them thoughtfully
in the palm of his large and healthy hand, considering the young fellow
before him with grave, far-sighted eyes:

"Stuyvesant," he said, "this prescription is not going to cure you. No
medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless
you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely
to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient
pitches in and helps himself. Is that plain talk?"

Quest nodded and reached shakily for the prescription; but the doctor
withheld it.

"You asked for plain talk; are you listening to what I'm saying?"

"Oh, hell, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together.
Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't
I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you
that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands
that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope
out; I'll do any turn you call for----"

"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go _now_!"

"All right, doctor. Only they're too damn rough with a man. All right;
I'll go. I _did_ go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled
suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?"

"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the
doctor, coldly using the vernacular.

"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if
I cut it