e-awake?"

"Yes." And the assistant looks confused enough for Tom to rejoin,--

"And you sold him laudanum?"

"Why--ah--"

"And you had sold him laudanum already this afternoon, you young rascal?
How dare you, twice in six hours? I'll hold you responsible for the
man's life!"

"You dare call me a rascal?" blusters the youth, terror-stricken at
finding how much Tom knows.

"I am a member of the College of Surgeons," says Tom, recovering his
coolness, "and have just been dining with Mr. Armsworth. I suppose you
know him?"

The assistant shook in his shoes at the name of that terrible justice of
the peace and of the war also; and meekly and contritely he replied,--

"Oh sir, what shall I do?"

"You're in a very neat scrape; you could not have feathered your nest
better," says Tom, quietly filling his pipe, and thinking. "As you
behave now, I will get you out of it, or leave you to--you know what, as
well as I. Get your hat."

He went out, and the youth followed trembling, while Tom formed his
plans in his mind.

"The wild beast goes home to his lair to die, and so may he; for I fear
it's life and death now. I'll try the house where he was born. Somewhere
in Water Lane it is I know."

And toward Water Lane he hurried. It was a low-lying offshoot of the
town, leading along the water meadows, with a straggling row of houses
on each side, the perennial haunts of fever and ague. Before them, on
each side the road, and fringed with pollard willows and tall poplars,
ran a tiny branch of the Whit, to feed some mill below; and spread out,
meanwhile, into ponds and mires full of offal and duckweed and rank
floating grass. A thick mist hung knee-deep over them, and over the
gardens right and left; and as Tom came down on the lane from the main
street above, he could see the mist spreading across the water-meadows
and reflecting the moon-beams like a lake; and as he walked into it, he
felt as if he were walking down a well. And he hurried down the lane,
looking out anxiously ahead for the long cloak.

At last he came to a better sort of house. That might be it. He would
take the chance. There was a man of the middle class, and two or three
women, standing at the gate. He went up--

"Pray, sir, did a medical man named Briggs ever live here?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Why"--Tom thought matters were too serious for delicacy--"I am looking
for a gentleman, and thought he might have come here."

"And so he d