"I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, Mark." Dr. Davenal's tone was so very grave that Mark Cray stared. He thought--Mark Cray almost thought that there was a shade of reproof in it, meant for him. "I am sure she has no serious hurt," he exclaimed. "Well, Mark, I can say nothing positively yet. In the state she is, and in this place, it is not easy to ascertain: but _I fear she has_." "My goodness!" cried Mark, conscious that he was but the veriest tyro beside that man of skill, of unerring practice, Richard Davenal, and feeling very little at the moment. "What is the hurt, sir?" he asked in a loud tone. "Hold your tongue about it," said the doctor. "Time enough to proclaim it abroad when the fact has been ascertained that there is one." Oswald Cray came up, having distinguished the doctor in the moonlight. "I wish you'd come and look at a poor fellow, Dr. Davenal, who wants a word of cheering. A word of such from you, you know sends the spirits up. You should have seen the man's face lighten when I said you were here." "Who is it?" asked the doctor, turning off with alacrity. "Poor Bigg the fireman. You know him, I daresay. He is badly scalded and bruised." "Oh, his hurts are nothing," slightingly spoke Mark Cray. "He seems one of those groaners who cry out at a touch of pain." "Mark," said the doctor, stopping, "allow me to tender you a word of advice--do not fall into that, by some, professed to be entertained idea, that nobody can, or ought, to feel pain; or, if they feel it, that they ought not to show it. It is unnatural, untruthful; and to my mind, particularly unbecoming in a medical man. Pain to some natures is all but an impossibility to bear; it is all that can be imagined of agony; it is as if every moment of its endurance were that of death. The nervous organisation is so sensitively delicate, that even a touch of pain, as you express it, which most people would scarcely feel, would certainly not cry out over, is to them the acutest suffering. As a surgeon and anatomist you ought to know this." "He's only a fireman," returned Mark. "Nobody expects those rough fellows to be sensitive to pain."