Dr. Horace Selby was a large, portly man, with an imposing presence. His nose and chin were bold and pronounced, yet his features were puffy--a combination which would blend more freely with the wig and cravat of the early Georges, than with the close-cropped hair and black frockcoat of the end of the nineteenth century. He was clean shaven, for his mouth was too good to cover, large, flexible and sensitive, with a kindly human softening at either corner, which, with his brown, sympathetic eyes, had drawn out many a shame-struck sinner's secret. Two masterful little bushy side whiskers bristled out from under his ears, spindling away upwards to merge in the thick curves of his brindled hair. To his patients there was something reassuring in the mere bulk and dignity of the man. A high and easy bearing in medicine, as in war, bears with it a hint of victories in the past, and a promise of others to come. Dr. Horace Selby's face was a consolation, and so, too, were the large, white, soothing hands, one of which he held out to his visitor. "I am sorry to have kept you waiting. It is a conflict of duties, you perceive. A host to his guests and an adviser to his patient. But now I am entirely at your disposal, Sir Francis. But, dear me, you are very cold." "Yes, I am cold." "And you are trembling all over. Tut, tut, this will never do. This miserable night has chilled you. Perhaps some little stimulant----" "No, thank you. I would really rather not. And it is not the night which has chilled me. I am frightened, doctor." The doctor half turned in his chair and patted the arch of the young man's knee as he might the neck of a restless horse. "What, then?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the pale face with the startled eyes. Twice the young man parted his lips. Then he stooped with a sudden gesture and turning up the right leg of his trousers he pulled down his sock and thrust forward his shin. The doctor made a clicking noise with his tongue as he glanced at it. "Both legs?" "No, only one." "Suddenly?" "This morning." "Hum!" The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb down the line of his chin. "Can you account for it?" he said briskly. "No." A trace of sternness came into the large, brown eyes. "I need not point out to you that unless the most absolute frankness----" The patient sprang from his chair. "So help me God, doctor," he cried, "I have nothing in my life with which to reproach myself. Do you think that I would be such a fool as to come here and tell you lies? Once for all, I have nothing to regret." He was a pitiful, half-tragic, and half-grotesque figure as he stood with one trouser leg rolled to his knee, and that ever-present horror still lurking in his eyes. A burst of merriment came from the card-players in the next room and the two looked at each other in silence.