‘Soon arter the duckin’ it come on, and it’s got wus and wus. I bought no end o’ lozengers and things off the barrers, as they sez cures a corf in no time; but they didn’t do me a bit o’ good. So I thought as I’d find you out and see if you could set me right. I ain’t bothered you for a good many years now.’ ‘Well, Josh, I’ll see what I can do for you, but you must be careful. You’d better keep indoors as much as you can, and I’ll give you a prescription.’ The doctor wrote something on a piece of paper, and handed it to Josh. ‘You’ll get that made up at any chemist’s,’ he said. ‘Let me see you again in a week.’ Josh took his prescription and thanked the doctor; but before he went he told him a portion of another little story, and, carried away by his excitement, he even went so far as to let the doctor into the details of a little scheme of vengeance which he was brewing against a man whom the doctor in days gone by had once known exceedingly well. The doctor was so interested in the story that he let Josh talk on for ever so long, utterly oblivions of the ladies and gentlemen drumming their heels in the waiting-room. And when Josh was gone he didn’t send for a fresh patient at once, but sat for a few minutes buried in thought. ‘I wonder what to do for the best,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘I suspect Gurth would like to be in at the death, and it’s all up with Edward Marston. He need fear nothing in that quarter now. Yes, I think Gurth had better come.’ That morning, when all the patients were disposed of, Dr. Birnie started out on his round of visits. But the first thing he did was to send a telegraphic message to America: ‘From Birnie, London, to Egerton, ———— Hotel, New York.—Come back. The game is yours. M. is trapped.’ Josh Heckett’s cough grew worse and worse. Bess and George were still with him, and very grateful they were for the means of avoiding pursuit. George never ventured out now, but Bess, thickly veiled, did all the marketing for the little household. She was a capital nurse too, and Josh, in his rough, uncouth way, was grateful. He had never known all his life what kindness was. Gertie he had looked upon as bound to do what he wanted, because he fed and kept her, and Gertie was only a child. But with Bess it was different. She and her husband had not only saved his life, they were going to be his chosen instruments in a deep-laid scheme of vengeance. He had found out now the whole vile plot against him, and as he sat at home and coughed, he brooded over his wrongs. He had found out that he had been frightened out of the country by a ruse, and that Marston and Preene were at the bottom of it. Every time he coughed, every time he swayed to and fro, the great gorged veins on his head standing out in ridges with the violence of the paroxysms, he cursed Marston. He believed that he had caught his death that night in the cold waters of the Serpentine, and he grew almost to thirst for his destroyer’s blood.