and since the tale of bricks is a
fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission to work
overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down and become as
mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.

Heatherlegh is the nicest doctor that ever was, and his invariable
prescription to all his patients is "lie low, go slow, and keep cool."
He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this
world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay who died under
his hands about three years ago. He has, of course, the right to speak
authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in
Pansay's head and a little bit of the Dark World came through and
pressed him to death. "Pansay went off the handle," says Heatherlegh,
"after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may not have
behaved like a blackguard to Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My notion is that
the work of the Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he
took to brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & O. flirtation. He
certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, and she certainly broke off the
engagement. Then he took a feverish chill and all that nonsense about
ghosts developed itself. Overwork started his illness, kept it alight,
and killed him, poor devil. Write him off to the System--one man to do
the work of two-and-a-half men."

I do not believe this. I used to sit up with Pansay sometimes when
Heatherlegh was called out to visit patients and I happened to be within
claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a low, even
voice the procession of men, women, children, and devils that was always
passing at the bottom of his bed. He had a sick man's command of
language. When he recovered I suggested that he should write out the
whole affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to
ease his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they are
never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this also is
Literature.

He was in a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder
Magazine style he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterwards he was
reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently
needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he
preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I secured
his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair,
dated 1885:--