“In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let but a pin fall, you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me, and _I’ll not come_.” He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury, wheeled and came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail whisking after him. “Next will come—_Cramps of the stomach_. Aha! “Then—_Bilious vomit_. Aha! “Then—_Cold sweat and deadly stupor_. “Then—_Confusion of all the senses_. “Then—_Bloody vomit_. “And after that nothing can save you, not even I; and if I could I would not, and so farewell.” Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard bolster with kindling eye. This added fuel to the fire, and brought the insulted ancient back from the impassable door, with his whisking train. “And after that—_Madness!_ “And after that—_Black vomit!_ “And then—_Convulsions!_ “And then—_That cessation of all vital functions the vulgar call ‘death,’_ for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence. Farewell.” He went. He came. He roared: “And think not to be buried in any Christian churchyard, for the bailiff is my good friend, and I shall tell him how and why you died: _felo de se! felo de se!_ Farewell.” Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic power excitement lent him, and, seeing him so moved, the vindictive orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat the world has unhappily lost, for as he came with his whisking train and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face and knocked him down like a shot, the boy’s head cracked under his falling master’s, and crash went the dumb-stricken orator into the basket, and there sat, wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting posture, so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the smaller howling. But soon the doctor’s face filled with horror, and he uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled with wonderful agility for one of his age. He was sitting on the hot coals. They had singed the cloth, and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled over with it sideways, and lo! a great hissing; then the humane Gerard ran and wrenched off the tight basket, not without a struggle. The doctor lay on his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which, however, being as various and even beautiful in colour as they were odious in taste, had strangely diversified his grey robe, and painted it more gaudy than neat. Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. “Courage, man, ’tis but cautery; balm of Gilead—why, you recommended it but now to my comrade here.”