The strong emotions of anger and revenge, which, with every fresh interview, rejection, and defeat, had been gradually gathering in his heart, had now indeed swollen, drop by drop, to the torrent he had predicted; and, like the reed upon the current, she was about to be swept away with it. "Harkye, Dobbie!" said he, through his clenched teeth, between which the blood was oozing, as he writhed in agony on his bed; "harkye! give me thy thumb; silence on all this--as thou livest, my good man and true--silence on this matter--I tell thee _silence_! Here is the warrant--seek the Albany herald and captain of the guard--quick! have this woman committed to ward, as it imports!" "Should she say she has been our prisoner already?" "Begone, fool! who would believe her? Hence--hence, my God!--go, wretch," he added, in a low, hissing voice, as Dobbie hurried away; "go, and accomplish this my work of vengeance; and, one day or other, I shall brush thee, too, from my path, like the bloated spider thou art!" In half an hour the physician arrived; and the light of the dull grey dawn presented a figure which certainly had something very appalling in it, for, in his haste, he had come away wearing a mask which was furnished with two large, green, globular glass eyes, to protect his face from the poisonous air and scorching heats of his laboratory. His high and wrinkled forehead lowered above it, and his long beard flowed below. The wound was speedily bathed and salved; and lint, with a bandage, was applied. "Thou seest, friend, that I find this new office of king's advocate no sinecure," said Redhall, with a fierce smile. "A thousand furies--how the wound smarts!" "'Tis the _unguentum armarium_," replied the learned John, with medical composure; "one touch is sufficient to make such a wound as this shrink to the size of a pin-thrust, and two ought to efface it." "I feel as if the dagger was still in my heart! Two touches cure, sayest thou?" "Yea, my lord." "I pray they may do so."