The negro bowed again like a slave to a lamp, and noiselessly departed. Very soon I heard the dull tramp of slippered feet on the corridor without. The door opened, and the negroes re-entered the room bearing between them a long slab, on which rested the inert figure of a young man. He seemed about twenty-two years of age. His face was extremely pale. His eyes were closed and his mouth was propped wide open with a curious spring wedge. He was nude to the waist, but thence downwards wrapped in an eiderdown shawl. His chest was narrow and his body hideously emaciated. As his chest moved up and down under his deep laboured breathing the ribs projected horribly, leaving dark hollows between. He was strapped securely to the slab and in such a thorough fashion that he could scarcely have moved a muscle howsoever much he had been minded. But he was evidently unconscious, doubtless in an anaesthetised sleep. This curious procession was followed by Dr. Fulton and a tall elderly gentleman similarly apparelled to the surgeons. I had never set eyes on him before. He had an eager, enthusiastic face. His nose was very long; he had high cheek-bones and prominent grey eyes full of a strange fanatical light. I put him down at one glance as a devotee of science. Afterwards I discovered that his name was Vernet, that he was a Frenchman, and resident house-surgeon to the hospital, which in fact he owned. He was the last to enter, and he closed and locked the door behind him. The negroes advanced to the bench, and having deposited the slab with its senseless burden, they moved over to the other operating table. Already the room had become oppressively hot, and I noticed beads of perspiration stand out on Sir Charles Venner's forehead as he bent to examine his patient with a stethoscope. Dr. Fulton beckoned Cavanagh and myself to approach, and by signs he directed us to stand at the feet of the young man upon whom Sir Charles was about to operate. We were thus quite out of the way of those who had work to do, but we could see everything, and I desired no better vantage post. Dr. Fulton stood behind the patient's head at the other end of the slab, holding in one hand a large rubber face mask, in the other a large stoppered phial, connected by a tube with the mask. Sir Charles Venner stood beside the patient between the two operating benches; and beside him was Dr. Vernet. Marion faced them from across the patient's body. She held in one hand a sponge, in the other a basin.