‘My good woman, I’m very sorry for you,’ said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders, ‘but it’s a very bad case. Frankly, it’s hopeless. There’s no use in deceiving you. The young man is dying.’ No cry of despair came from the mother’s parched lips. She made no moan, but only crouched by her son’s bed, clasping him in her arms, as if she would have held him back from death by the sheer force of maternal love. She never turned to look at the doctor as he moved slowly towards the door. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad case. The drainage of this place is shameful. We positively invite disease. I can’t do anything more. You can go on with the laudanum and the brandy; but I’m afraid it’s useless. And you might put a mustard plaster to the soles of his feet.’ Mrs. Joyce sprang up and ran to the cupboard, as if awakened to new life. There was a ray of hope for her in being told to do something, even though in the same breath the doctor said that it was useless. Cyril followed the doctor into the dusky alley. Summer stars were shining down upon them, through the dim gray night. Blotches of yellow light gleamed in wretched windows, where there were more rags than glass, and more paper than rags. Every door-step was occupied by squatting forms of slipshod matrons, or men in shirt sleeves, smoking their clay pipes. The fumes of rank tobacco contested for mastery with sulphuric acid and asafœtida. A horrible place to live in--a worse place to die in. ‘Dr. Saunders, I would give a great deal to save that young man,’ said Cyril, putting his arm through the doctor’s. They had met continually during the troublous summer, and had grown very friendly. ‘So would I, my dear sir,’ answered Dr. Saunders. ‘You don’t suppose I’m adamant, do you? That woman’s face has hit me harder than anything I’ve met with in the last miserable six weeks. But I can’t help her. The young man is sinking.’ ‘Is not cholera more or less a disorganization of the blood?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘Have you ever tried the effect of transfusion upon a patient in a state of collapse?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘When I was in Paris I heard a good deal about the transmission of blood from the veins of a healthy patient to those of a sinking one. I saw the operation performed at the Hôtel Dieu, and the result was successful.’ ‘That’s an old idea,’ said the parish doctor, ‘but I’ve never gone into it. It was tried in the seventeenth century in France by Denis, the anatomist, and at Oxford by Dr. Richard Lower, who performed transfusion on animals. Dr. Blundell was the first English physician who performed experiments of that kind on the human subject. I’ve never done such a thing myself, and I can’t say I should like to attempt it.’ ‘It’s the simplest process imaginable,’ said Cyril, ‘almost as easy as bleeding.’ And then he described the operation, as he had seen it performed in Paris. ‘It may be easy enough, but I shouldn’t care to try it.’