‘I ought not to do it on my own responsibility,’ he said to himself. ‘Suppose both men were to die, and there were an outcry against me in the newspapers. I should be ruined. If the air gets into the veins of either subject he is a dead man. I must have some one with me. Old Bolling would do. He’s just the man. He would cut off a patient’s head for the sake of an experiment, if the chances of his putting it on again properly were as one in fifty. He has killed more patients and made more wonderful cures than any doctor in the north of England.’ Fortunately Dr. Bolling’s abode was not very remote. It was a shabby old square red brick house in the market-place, and had never been painted outside or inside within the memory of man. It was a house of about twenty rooms. Old Bolling lived in two of them, and his housekeeper occupied a third. Bats, mice, spiders, beetles, and such small deer had free warren in all the others. There was a very fine breed of cockchafers on which the old physician rather prided himself. In the summer evenings they got into his lamp and candles, and made his dingy old surgery musical. The furniture was a miracle of antiquity and ugliness--tables as thick as tombstones--chairs that only a strong man could move--horsehair and moreen upholstery so interpenetrated with dust that brushing or beating would have been a mockery. Perhaps that is why the old housekeeper never attempted either process. Dr. Bolling seemed to have left off having his windows cleaned at some early period of his professional career. Perhaps the subdued light which crept through his opaque and smoke-darkened panes suited him, just as smoke-coloured spectacles suit some people’s eyes. The housekeeper had left off suggesting that the windows would be better for cleaning. ‘What’s the use?’ Dr. Bolling had asked, years ago, when she hinted that the operation would improve the general appearance of his house. ‘They’d get dirty again, wouldn’t they?’ ‘Certainly,’ agreed the housekeeper. ‘They’d get dirty again--after a time.’ ‘Of course, and we should be no better off than we are now. I should have spent money on cleaning them for no purpose. Besides, if the windows were clean my old furniture might look shabby. Now in this tempered light, it looks uncommonly well.’