wiftly, still transfixed by the one
idea of seeing my uncle.

His bed-room door beside the fireplace stood partly open, and I looked in.

Old Wyat, a white, high-cauled ghost, was pottering in her slippers in the
shadow at the far side of the bed. The doctor, a stout little bald man,
with a paunch and a big bunch of seals, stood with his back to the
fireplace, which corresponded with that in the next room, eyeing his
patient through the curtains of the bed with a listless sort of importance.

The head of the large four-poster rested against the opposite wall. Its
foot was presented toward the fireplace; but the curtains at the side,
which alone I could see from my position, were closed.

The little doctor knew me, and thinking me, I suppose, a person of
consequence, removed his hands from behind him, suffering the skirts of his
coat to fall forward, and with great celerity and gravity made me a low but
important bow; then choosing more particularly to make my acquaintance
he further advanced, and with another reverence he introduced himself
as Doctor Jolks, in a murmured diapason. He bowed me back again into my
uncle's study, and the light of old Wyat's dreadful candle.

Doctor Jolks was suave and pompous. I longed for a fussy practitioner who
would have got over the ground in half the time.

Coma, madam; coma. Miss Ruthyn, your uncle, I may tell you, has been in a
very critical state; highly so. Coma of the most obstinate type. He would
have sunk--he must have gone, in fact, had I not resorted to a very extreme
remedy, and bled him freely, which happily told precisely as we could have
wished. A wonderful constitution--a marvellous constitution--prodigious
nervous fibre; the greatest pity in the world he won't give himself fair
play. His habits, you know, are quite, I may say, destructive. We do
our best--we do all we can, but if the patient won't cooperate it can't
possibly end satisfactorily.'

And Jolks accompanied this with an awful shrug. 'Is there _anything_? Do
you think change of air? What an awful complaint it is,' I exclaimed.

He smiled, mysteriously looking down, and shook his head undertaker-like.

'Why, we can hardly call it a _complaint_, Miss Ruthyn. I look upon it he
has been poisoned--he has had, you understand me,' he pursued, observing my
startled look, 'an overdose of opium; you know he takes opium habitually;
he takes it in laudanum, he takes it in water, and, most dangerous of all,
he take