“Have you forgotten it _again_?” sneered the doctor, seeming to grow taller and broader as his antagonist dwindled. “I expected you would hide behind that excuse. It is a convenient one. You _have_ forgotten it; well, we will let that pass and you shall tell me instead why your first one failed to operate the first time you tried it.” “I will not,” shouted Earle, driven apparently to bay. “That it did fail you remember and so do I, but after fourteen years devoted to other subjects I am not going to try and pick up those old threads again and explain to you every step by which I won success at last.” “But I will wait,” suggested the doctor. “You shall not be hurried; there is nothing more important to be done in town just now.” “Isn’t there? I think there is, Dr. Izard. You have shown yourself my enemy ever since I came to Hamilton; but for reasons that were satisfactory to me I have let it pass, as you have let my so-called imposture pass. I did not wish to stir up old grievances; but you attack me and must expect to be yourself attacked. Of what complaint did Huldah Earle die? Answer me that! Or I will brand _you_ for a——” “Hush!” The word sprang from Clarke, who had seen the doctor cower, as if some awful weight were about to be heaved upon him. “Weigh your words, Mr. Earle; for if you utter an untrue one you shall be brought to dearly rue it.” “I will weigh them,” answered the other, growing taller in his turn as the doctor shrank before him; “weigh them in the balance of this respected man’s innocence. Look at his whitening cheek, his trembling form! If he could mention the complaint which carried my wife away in the flower of her youth, do you think he would hesitate and turn pale before her child? Or perhaps _he_ has forgotten; it is fourteen years ago, and as I have taken refuge in that excuse, why not he?” “O God!” burst from Polly’s lips; “what horror is this?” But the doctor, goaded by this last sting, had roused himself. “I have not forgotten,” said he. “I forget nothing; not even the slight discoloration which always disfigured Ephraim Earle’s left eye, and which is absent from yours. But I do not know the exact cause of Mrs. Earle’s death. I never knew. If you were her husband, you would remember that I several times declared I was working in the dark, and even after she was dead acknowledged myself to have failed in my diagnosis, and wished you had called down physicians from Boston.” “Oh, I remember; but I was not deceived then by your humility, nor am I deceived by it now, I will have her body dug up. I will—” “Oh, no! no!” shrieked Polly, thrusting out her hands before her eyes. “I—cannot—bear—this. I—I do not think the doctor can bear this. Look at him! He is not sane! He——”