There was not the slightest doubt about its being the bottle. It was passed to Casey. He had a smell. "This isn't laudanum," he declared. "_Not_ laudanum!" Back it went to Dunn. "It doesn't smell like laudanum." "It isn't laudanum," said Goldsmith. "Not a trace of it," said Casey. NOT laudanum! I looked at Hughes. He looked at me. Then he staggered towards that fatal bottle. "Let me--let me smell it." They let him. An extraordinary change came over his countenance as he applied it to his nose. He staggered against the wall. "Good--good heavens!" What was it? Had he mistaken the poison? Was it strychnine, arsenic, prussic acid? Would the treatment have to be gone through all over again? For me, death rather than that. "I see it all," cried Hughes, "I see the mistake I made. After all, it was not the bottle I supposed. I remember now that I placed that upon the shelf above." "What is it?" I screamed. "It's--it's what I thought it was." "What you thought it was?" "It's 'Aunt Jane's Jalap.'" "'Aunt Jane's Jalap!'" The words came from the three medical gentlemen in a sort of chorus. As for me, in spite of my piteous condition, I felt inclined to tear my hair--and Hughes's! "I see, quite clearly, how the mistake arose. It was in this way. There were two sample bottles of the mixture, only in one of them the quantities were wrong. I placed it where I generally keep my laudanum--so that I shouldn't mistake it. And when I found it missing, of course I thought it was the laudanum which had gone." "Was it--was it poison?" "Not a bit of it, dear boy! The finest medicine in the world! Only in that particular bottle there was a little too much jalap, and, taking it on the top of such a dinner as you'd been eating, it a little upset you--that was all." That was all? I thought of how those doctors had spent the night in practising on us their dreadful arts, of their bills, and----that was all. WILLYUM. I had been seated in the next chair to hers for at least two minutes. I felt that it was time to introduce myself. "It's a fine evening." She turned, she looked me up and down, then she looked straight in front of her again. "I don't know you." But I was not to be crushed; there was something about the shape of her that which suggested sociability. "That is my misfortune, rather than my fault." "I don't know nothing at all about that. I do not speak to strangers as a rule. Sometimes there's never no knowing who they are." I felt that I was getting on--so I went on. "What do you think of the band?" "It's not loud enough for me. I like a band as I can hear."