"Leave him to me, gentlemen!" he continued with a third flourish of his wrist. "Leave him to me and Hippocrates!" "Which we do," I replied, "with the more confidence in that Hippocrates had so much foreknowledge of the Latin tongue." And so we got us back to the parlour. How the minutes dragged! Through the door I could still hear the noise of the man's breathing; and now and again the light clink of instruments and a trickling sound as of blood dripping into a bason. I paced impatiently about the room, while Jack sat him down at the table and began loading his pistols. "The twenty-first!" I exclaimed, "and this day is the fourteenth. Seven days, Jack! I have but seven days to win from here to Bristol." I went to the window and leaned out. Swasfield's horse was standing quietly in the road, tethered by the bridle to a tree. "'Canst do it, Morrice, if the wind holds fair," replied Jack. "Heaven send a wind!" and he rose from the table and joined me. Together we stretched out to catch the least hint of a breeze. But not a breath came to us; not a tree shimmered, not a shadow stirred. The world slumbered in a hot stupor. It seemed you might have felt the air vibrate with the passage of a single bird. Of a sudden Larke cried out: "Art sure 'tis the fourteenth to-day?" With that we scrambled back into the room and searched for a calendar. "Ay, lad!" he said ruefully as he discovered it; "'tis the fourteenth, not a doubt of it." I flung myself dejectedly on the couch. The volume of Horace lay open by my hand, and I took it up, and quite idly, with no thought of what I was doing, I wrote this date and the name of the month and the date of the year on the margin of the page. "Lord!" exclaimed Jack, flinging up his hands. "At the books again? Hast no boots and spurs?" I slipped the book into my pocket, and sprang to my feet. In the heat of my anxiety I had forgotten everything but this half-spoken message. But, or ever I could make a step, the door of the bedroom opened and the surgeon stepped into the room. "Can he speak now?" I asked. "The fit has not passed," says he. "Then in God's name, what ails the man?" cries Larke. "It is a visitation," says the doctor, with an upward cast of his eyes. "It is a canting ass of a doctor," I yelled in a fury, and I clapped my hat on my head. "Your boots?" cried Larke. "I'll e'en go in my shoes," I shouted back. I snatched up one of Jack's pistols, rammed it into my pocket, and so clattered downstairs and into the street. I untied Swasfield's horse and sprang on to its back. "Morrice!" I looked up. Jack was leaning out from the window. "Morrice," he said whimsically, and with a very winning smile, "'art not so much of a woman after all." I dug my heels into the horse's flanks and so rode out at a gallop beneath the lime-trees to Rotterdam. CHAPTER II. I REACH LONDON, AND THERE MAKE AN ACQUAINTANCE.