is
pulse was not perceptible. After two more hours his agony had passed.

"Baker, do you want anything?" asked Mr. Clayton, trying to rouse him.

"Me?" very faintly came the response.

"Yes. Do you want anything?"

"Oh, ... I'll tell you: The governor ... he found out my brother ...
done it ... an' ... an' he's goin' to ... pardon me.... Fifteen years,
an' played off ... played off crazy.... Forty lashes every Monday ...
mornin'.... Cell hunder'd'n one's mine.... Well, I'll tell you:
Governor's goin' to ... pardon me out."

He ceased his struggling to speak. A half-hour passed in silence, and
then he roused himself feebly and whispered:

"He'll ... pardon ... me."

The old boots stared blankly and coldly at the ceiling; their patient
expression no longer bore a trace of life or suffering, and their calm
repose was undisturbed by the song of the mocking-bird in the oriel.

His Unconquerable Enemy

I was summoned from Calcutta to the heart of India to perform a
difficult surgical operation on one of the women of a great rajah's
household. I found the rajah a man of a noble character, but possessed,
as I afterwards discovered, of a sense of cruelty purely Oriental and
in contrast to the indolence of his disposition. He was so grateful for
the success that attended my mission that he urged me to remain a guest
at the palace as long as it might please me to stay, and I thankfully
accepted the invitation.

One of the male servants early attracted my notice for his marvellous
capacity of malice. His name was Neranya, and I am certain that there
must have been a large proportion of Malay blood in his veins, for,
unlike the Indians (from whom he differed also in complexion), he was
extremely alert, active, nervous, and sensitive. A redeeming
circumstance was his love for his master. Once his violent temper led
him to the commission of an atrocious crime,--the fatal stabbing of a
dwarf. In punishment for this the rajah ordered that Neranya's right
arm (the offending one) be severed from his body. The sentence was
executed in a bungling fashion by a stupid fellow armed with an axe,
and I, being a surgeon, was compelled, in order to save Neranya's life,
to perform an amputation of the stump, leaving not a vestige of the
limb remaining.

After this he developed an augmented fiendishness. His love for the
rajah was changed to hate, and in his mad anger he flung discretion to
the winds. Driven once to frenzy by t