up at his hard, thin-lipped face, and he
seemed somewhat disconcerted; but only jabbed his probe in a little
deeper and remarked jocularly:

"Ah, I see, you're tougher than I thought."

More oblivion, and when I next came to I knew that _they_ had both
been carried away from me and buried--Hop Lee, and his wife beside
him, and that that chapter in my life was, for ever and ever, closed.

Now I was in charge of a hospital nurse. A horrible creature she was,
lean and hard-faced, with a straight slit across her face for mouth,
and little grey, cruel eyes. Like a nightmare she hung round my bed,
preventing me from getting better.

All the fiendish tortures and cruelties that she had witnessed within
the hospital walls had, I suppose, made her the thing she was.

Days had passed, and very slowly a little strength had crept back into
me, enough for me to see I was not getting well as quickly as my youth
and strength would let me if there were no drawback. I drew all my
forces together to try and understand this, and then I noticed that
regularly after each dose of physic I went back a little.

More fever, more pain in my shoulder, more delusions before the brain.
Each morning when the vitality within me had struggled through the
evil effects of my medicine I was better, then came the harpy-faced
nurse to the pillow--my dose--then pain and illness again.

The look on the face of the woman as I drank it was extraordinary. A
sly, pleased look, as one sees on the face of a schoolboy dismembering
a living fly.

One day I took the glass as usual from her, but instead of raising it
to my lips, turned it upside down through the window.

The woman turned red, and then livid.

"What does that mean, sir, may I ask?"

"Simply that I am not going to take any more medicine, thank you," I
replied quietly, "as I now wish to get well."

"My orders from the doctor are that you shall take it," she said
grimly; "and I'll make you."

She poured out another glass of the medicine and approached the bed,
with the intention, it seemed, of opening my mouth and pouring it
down. But I had had no weakening, sense-destroying drug that morning,
and nature was rapidly curing me.

She forgot that. As she came up, I sprang from the bed, put my hand on
her shoulder, and forced her to the door. She shrieked and protested,
but she could not resist. I put her outside and locked the door.

Then I sank down trembling with exhaustion, for I was ver