That nobody spoke was perhaps too much to say, for Mr. Crowe had one open and bitter enemy on the staff of St. Bernard’s. Mr. Ringrose, the surgeon, had been quarrelling with him for years in a gentlemanly and polite sort of way. Each had presented the other to the council as having done something unprofessional. Crowe accused Ringrose of having killed a man through operating on him when drunk; and Ringrose, who was a popular man, had branded Crowe as an atheist who was damaging the reputation of the school by seducing the young men from the Christian faith by his blasphemous remarks and ridicule of Scripture. Mr. Ringrose did not scruple to say that, if anybody wanted to get rid of his wife, he could not do better than learn physiology. And so what with speaking out, and what with shrugging his shoulders and hinting the darkest things possible, he managed to imbue everybody in the place with dire suspicions about Mr. Crowe. Soon everybody got hold somehow of the whole circumstances connected with the death of the lady; and though there was not enough known to make a legal investigation desirable or possible, there was abundant reason for shunning Mr. Crowe’s society. The students soon caught the infection, and all sorts of _graffiti_ were blazing openly on the walls of the college; toadstools surmounted by a death’s head and cross-bones; legends such as— “_Crow’s-foot, a poisonous plant of the order Ranunculacæ_;” under which a wag added— “But not half so deadly as _Crowe’s hand_, order _Physiologacæ_.” One day Mr. Ringrose accidentally found that he had seated himself at a table in the refreshment department at the Army and Navy Stores facing Mr. Crowe, who was lunching off a dish of curried fowl, and surrounded by various little purchases which encumbered the chair next his own. The men nodded coldly, but did not speak to each other. Mr. Ringrose, impelled by the demon of mischief, demanded of the waiter to come and attend to him. “Have you any mushrooms?” “No, sir. Mushrooms not in season, sir.” “Of course not. How stupid of me!” Mr. Crowe, under the glare of his enemy’s cruel eye, visibly winced; his face paled, and Ringrose could see that the arrow had gone home. The physiologist beckoned to a waiter, gave his number, paid his bill to the boy who came round for the money, picked up his little brown-paper parcels, and went off. Mr. Ringrose felt sure that one murderer had lunched that day in decent company. Now Mr. Mole had long been working to supplant his chief. He aimed at nothing less than the chair of physiology. In a very short time things became so unpleasant for Mr. Crowe, that he was fain to resign his appointment as surgeon to the hospital, though for the present he retained his lectureship at the medical school. CHAPTER XLII. THE BACILLUS OF LOVE.