The room was nearly full of terrified neighbours: Sampson shouldered them all roughly out of his way, and there, on a bed, lay Maxley's gaunt figure in agony. His body was drawn up by the middle into an arch, and nothing touched the bed but the head and the heels; the toes were turned back in the most extraordinary contortion, and the teeth set by the rigour of the convulsion, and in the man's white face and fixed eyes were the horror and anxiety, that so often show themselves when the body feels itself in the grip of Death. Mr. Osmond the surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying to get laudanum down the throat, but the clenched teeth were impassable. He now looked up and said politely, “Ah! Dr. Sampson, I am glad to see you here. The seizure is of a cataleptic nature, I apprehend. The treatment hitherto has been hot epithems to the abdomen, and----” Here Sampson, who had examined the patient keenly, and paid no more attention to Osmond than to a fly buzzing, interrupted him as unceremoniously-- “Poisoned,” said he philosophically. “Poisoned!!” screamed the people. “Poisoned!” cried Mr. Osmond, in whose little list of stereotyped maladies poisoned had no place. “Is there any one you have reason to suspect?” “I don't suspect, nor conject, sir: I know. The man is poisoned, the substance strychnine. Now stand out of the way you gaping gabies, and let me work. Hy, young Oxford! you are a man: get behind and hold both his arms for your life! That's you!” He whipped off his coat laid hold of Osmond's epithems, chucked them across the room, saying, “You may just as well squirt rose-water at a house on fire;” drenched his handkerchief with chloroform, sprang upon the patient like a mountain cat and chloroformed him with all his might. Attacked so skilfully and resolutely, Maxley resisted little for so strong a man; but the potent poison within fought virulently: as a proof, the chloroform had to be renewed three times before it could produce any effect. At last the patient yielded to the fumes and became insensible. Then the arched body subsided and the rigid muscles relaxed and turned supple. Sampson kneaded the man like dough by way of comment. “It is really very extraordinary,” said Osmond. “Mai--dearr--sirr, nothing's extraornary t' a man that knows the reason of iverything.” He then inquired if any one in the room had noticed at what intervals of time the pains came on. “I am sorry to say it is continuous,” said Osmond. “Mai--dearr--sirr, nothing on airth is continuous: iverything has paroxysms and remissions--from a toothache t' a cancer.” He repeated his query in various forms, till at last a little girl squeaked out, “If--_you_---please, sir, the throes do come about every ten minutes, for I was a looking at the clock; I carries father his dinner at twelve.”