Sometimes, with that sort of hardihood, rather than reason, which makes a desperate man try to believe by his will what he longs to know to be true, Dr. Hicok would say to himself, “I know I’ve got him!” And then his heart would seem to fall out of him, it sank so suddenly, and with so deadly a faintness, as the other side of his awful case loomed before him, and he thought, “But if--?” He would not finish _that_ question; he could not. The furthest point to which he could bring himself was that of a sort of icy outer stiffening of acquiescence in the inevitable. There was a ring at the street-door. The servant brought in a card, on a silver salver. +-----------------+ | MR. APOLLO LYON | +-----------------+ “Show the gentleman in,” said the doctor. He spoke with difficulty; for the effort to control his own nervous excitement was so immense an exertion, that he hardly had the self-command and muscular energy even to articulate. The servant returned, and ushered into the library a handsome, youngish, middle-aged and middle-sized gentleman, pale, with large melancholy black eyes, and dressed in the most perfect and quiet style. The doctor arose, and greeted his visitor with a degree of steadiness and politeness that did him the greatest credit. “How do you do, sir?” he said: “I am happy”--but it struck him that he wasn’t, and he stopped short. “Very right, my dear sir,” replied the guest, in a voice that was musical but perceptibly sad, or rather patient in tone. “Very right; how hollow those formulas are! I hate all forms and ceremonies! But I am glad to see _you_, doctor. Now, that is really the fact.” No doubt! “Divil doubt him!” as an Irishman would say. So is a cat glad to see a mouse in its paw. Something like these thoughts arose in the doctor’s mind; he smiled as affably as he could, and requested the visitor to be seated. “Thanks!” replied he, and took the chair which the doctor moved up to the table for him. He placed his hat and gloves on the table. There was a brief pause, as might happen if any two friends sat down at their ease for a chat on matters and things in general. The visitor turned over a volume or two that lay on the table. “The Devil,” he read from one of them; “His Origin, Greatness, and Decadence. By the Rev. A. Réville, D.D.” “Ah!” he commented quietly. “A Frenchman, I observe. If it had been an Englishman, I should fancy he wrote the book for the sake of the rhyme in the title. Do you know, doctor, I fancy that incredulity of his will substitute one dash for the two periods in the reverend gentleman’s degree! I know no one greater condition of success in some lines of operation, than to have one’s existence thoroughly disbelieved in.”