hat placid languor which
sleeps on the features, which illness always creates and which
spiritualizes and intellectualizes the most common features, the invalid
might be supposed to be enjoying the most quiet slumber.

Excepting the invalid, there was no one in that chamber save the
faithful Ali, who moved noiselessly about, from time to time, or sat
immovably upon the floor and gazed on his master's pallid face.

As the silvery tones of the chamber clock tinkled forth the third
quarter after ten, the door opened, and a small, dark, thin man, with
large whiskers, keen, penetrating eyes, broad, bald forehead, thinly
covered with gray hair, and apparently about fifty years of age, briskly
entered. It was Dr. Orfila, a name somewhat known in medical science.
Approaching the bed, he placed his fingers upon the sick man's pulse,
and gazed earnestly on his face for some time in silence.

"Strange!" he at length muttered; "the most powerful drugs in the most
unheard-of quantities are powerless! Who, then, is this man, whose
nature so differs from that of every one else? Can he so have
accustomed his system to poisons, that, as with the King of Pontus, they
are ineffectual to help or to harm him? His constitution must be iron!
The vitality of a dozen men is in him, or he'd have been dead a month
ago. Well, it's plain he's no worse, if he's no better. Drugs are
useless, and he must be left to nature and his amazing constitution.
This stupor, this utter death of all the faculties and senses for so
long a time, is wonderful. Fever, delirium, anything but this death-like
trance. It seems as if this man had been sleepless all his life before,
and that now his overwrought brain and heart were compensating
themselves for the toil and wakefulness of years. Could I but excite the
nerves!"

For some time the physician gazed in deep thought at the pale face of
the unconscious slumberer. Suddenly turning to the Nubian, he said to
him:

"Ali, where does your master keep the drugs he has been for years
accustomed to take?"

The Nubian stared in mute amazement, but moved not from his rug.

"Ali," said Dr. Orfila, sternly, "unless I see and know those drugs,
this night your master dies."

The Nubian looked anxiously into the face of the physician, and then, as
if satisfied with the scrutiny, rose, and, with noiseless steps, left
the room. In a few moments he re-entered and placed in the physician's
hands a small casket of ebony, exqu