Dr. Birnie was at home for consultation till twelve, and his rooms were generally crowded with genuine patients. They were, naturally, well-dressed, well-to-do people, for his fee was high. One morning, as the ladies and gentlemen at Dr. Birnie’s sat glaring at each other amid the funereal silence which generally reigns in a doctor’s waiting-room, the door opened, and a rough, hulking old man was shown in by the solemn attendant. He was about six feet, and broad in proportion, his hair and beard were grizzled, and his face was bronzed with exposure. He wasn’t a nice-looking old gentleman at all, and his get-up did not improve his appearance. He wore a thick pilot jacket, which was anything but a fit, and round his throat was twisted a dirty white comforter. He took off his hat as he entered the room, and sidled awkwardly to a chair, sitting on the extreme edge, and eyeing the company nervously. At first the ladies and gentlemen wondered what such a huge, powerful fellow could possibly want with a doctor. They imagined he must be a navvy, or something of the sort, and they felt it was like his impudence to come and sit down in their presence. But presently the great frame was racked, the fierce face became crimson, and the silence of the waiting-room was broken by the violent coughing of the new-comer. That a man with a cough like that should need medical advice the ladies and gentlemen understood, but their astonishment was great when the door opened and the solemn attendant beckoned to this ‘navigator’ to come out. The idea of the doctor taking such a person out of his turn! It was strange, certainly, but Dr. Birnie had done it, and when the rough-looking fellow was shown into his consulting-room, he held out his hand, and exclaimed, quite familiarly, ‘Well, Josh, wherever have you turned up from?’ Then Mr. Josh Heckett told Dr. Birnie a long story, beginning in England, then going to Australia, and coming back to England again, and the said story ended on the banks of the Serpentine. ‘Good gracious me!’ said the doctor. ‘And you mean to say that Marston deliberately tried to murder you?’ ‘I do by———!’ exclaimed Heckett, bringing his fist down on the table till the surgical instruments danced again; ‘and he’s done it, except as it’s a slow death ‘stid of a quick un. I ain’t been the same man, guv’nor, since that there night. It’s the wettin’ and the cold as done it. This ‘ere corf don’t give me no rest night nor day.’ Dr. Birnie put something to the old man’s chest and listened, then he put his ear to his back and made him draw his breath, and then the doctor’s face assumed a grave, profound look. ‘Hem!’ he said; ‘that’s bad. You ought to have come to me before. How long have you had this cough?’