were displaced or tampered with; great
loss of blood followed. MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam.
He was one of those surgeons whom it is dangerous to vex--abrupt in his
best moods, in his worst savage. On seeing Moore's state he relieved his
feelings by a little flowery language, with which it is not necessary to
strew the present page. A bouquet or two of the choicest blossoms fell
on the unperturbed head of one Mr. Graves, a stony young assistant he
usually carried about with him; with a second nosegay he gifted another
young gentleman in his train--an interesting fac-simile of himself,
being indeed his own son; but the full _corbeille_ of blushing bloom
fell to the lot of meddling womankind, _en masse_.

For the best part of one winter night himself and satellites were busied
about Moore. There at his bedside, shut up alone with him in his
chamber, they wrought and wrangled over his exhausted frame. They three
were on one side of the bed, and Death on the other. The conflict was
sharp; it lasted till day broke, when the balance between the
belligerents seemed so equal that both parties might have claimed the
victory.

At dawn Graves and young MacTurk were left in charge of the patient,
while the senior went himself in search of additional strength, and
secured it in the person of Mrs. Horsfall, the best nurse on his staff.
To this woman he gave Moore in charge, with the sternest injunctions
respecting the responsibility laid on her shoulders. She took this
responsibility stolidly, as she did also the easy-chair at the bedhead.
That moment she began her reign.

Mrs. Horsfall had one virtue--orders received from MacTurk she obeyed to
the letter. The ten commandments were less binding in her eyes than her
surgeon's dictum. In other respects she was no woman, but a dragon.
Hortense Moore fell effaced before her; Mrs. Yorke withdrew--crushed;
yet both these women were personages of some dignity in their own
estimation, and of some bulk in the estimation of others. Perfectly
cowed by the breadth, the height, the bone, and the brawn of Mrs.
Horsfall, they retreated to the back parlour. She, for her part, sat
upstairs when she liked, and downstairs when she preferred it. She took
her dram three times a day, and her pipe of tobacco four times.

As to Moore, no one now ventured to inquire about him. Mrs. Horsfall had
him at dry-nurse. It was she who was to do for him, and the general
conjecture now ran that s