who was near-sighted, staring at Magneezhy's bloody face through
his silver spectacles--"what's the matter?"

The poor patient knew at once his master's tongue, and lifting up one of
his eyes, the other being stiff and barkened down said in a melancholy
voice, "Ah, master, do you think I'll get better?"

Doctor Peelbox, old man as he was, started back as if he had been a
French dancing-master, or had stramped on a hot bar of iron. "Tom, Tom,
is this you? what, in the name of wonder, has done this?" Then feeling
his wrist--"but your pulse is quite good. Have you fallen, boy? Where
is the blood coming from?"

"Somewhere about the hairy scalp," answered Magneezhy, in their own queer
sort of lingo. "I doubt some artery's cut through!"

The Doctor immediately bade him lie quiet and hush, as he was getting a
needle and silken thread ready to sew it up; ordering me to have a basin
and water ready, to wash the poor lad's physog. I did so as hard as I
was able, though I was not sure about the blood just; old Doctor Peelbox
watching over my shoulder with a lighted penny candle in one hand, and
the needle and thread in the other, to see where the blood spouted from.
But we were as daft as wise; so he bade me take my big shears, and cut
out all the hair on the fore part of the head as bare as my loof; and
syne we washed, and better washed; so Magneezhy got the other eye up,
when the barkened blood was loosed; looking, though as pale as a clean
shirt, more frighted than hurt; until it became plain to us all, first to
the Doctor, syne to me, and syne to Tammie Bodkin, and last of all to
Magneezhy himself, that his skin was not so much as peeled. So we helped
him out of the bed, and blithe was I to see the lad standing on the
floor, without a hold, on his own feet.

I did my best to clean his neckcloth and shirt of the blood, making him
look as decentish as possible, considering circumstances; and lending
him, as the scripture commands, my tartan mantle to hide the infirmity of
his bloody trowsers and waistcoat. Home went he and his master together;
me standing at our close mouth, wishing them a good-morning, and blithe
to see their backs. Indeed, a condemned thief with the rope about his
neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands
yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over,
could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same
blessed moment. It