is sure to come in a few
hours, and seeing like brute beasts only what is under their noses,
having meantime robbed him of the very blood his hurt had spared him to
battle that weakness withal; and so he dies exhausted. Hundreds have I
seen so scratched and pricked out of the world, Gerard, and tall fellows
too; but lo! if they have the luck to be wounded where no doctor can
be had, then they live; this too have I seen. Had I ever outlived that
field in Brabant but for my most lucky mischance, lack of chirurgery?
The frost chocked all my bleeding wounds, and so I lived. A chirurgeon
had pricked yet one more hole in this my body with his lance, and
drained my last drop out, and my spirit with it. Seeing them thus
distraught in bleeding of the bleeding soldier, I place no trust in
them; for what slays a veteran may well lay a milk-and-water bourgeois
low."

"This sounds like common sense," sighed Gerard languidly, "but no
need to raise your voice so; I was not born deaf, and just now I hear
acutely."

"Common sense! very common sense indeed," shouted the bad listener;
"why, this is a soldier; a brute whose business is to kill men, not cure
them." He added in very tolerable French, "Woe be to you, unlearned
man, if you come between a physician and his patient; and woe be to you,
misguided youth, if you listen to that man of blood."

"Much obliged," said Denys, with mock politeness; "but I am a true man,
and would rob no man of his name. I do somewhat in the way of blood, but
not worth mention in this presence. For one I slay, you slay a score;
and for one spoonful of blood I draw, you spill a tubful. The world is
still gulled by shows. We soldiers vapour with long swords, and even in
war be-get two foes for every one we kill; but you smooth gownsmen, with
soft phrases and bare bodkins, 'tis you that thin mankind."

"A sick chamber is no place for jesting," cried the physician.

"No, doctor, nor for bawling," said the patient peevishly.

"Come, young man," said the senior kindly, "be reasonable. Cuilibet
in sua arte credendum est. My whole life has been given to this art. I
studied at Montpelier; the first school in France, and by consequence in
Europe. There learned I Dririmancy, Scatomancy, Pathology, Therapeusis,
and, greater than them all, Anatomy. For there we disciples of
Hippocrates and Galen had opportunities those great ancients never knew.
Goodbye, quadrupeds and apes, and paganism, and Mohammedanism; we bou