Treacherous germs await old gentlemen who sleep beneath open windows. Riding at ease with the army of descending smuts that denote the industry of a Midland town, they enter the system and take command. Wherefore, ten days later, instead of walking with sprightly step down Brigan High Street, Eliphalet Cardomay was lying in bed, contemplating M. Dyson, of the Royal Theatre, Brigan, with a pleading and watery eye. But the manager was not a man to allow sentiment to stand in the way of business. “Any other night, Mr. Cardomay,” he said, “I’d have bitten on the bullet and said, ‘Stop away’—but this is our biggest business day in the calendar, and if you go out of the bill . . .” He finished the sentence with an expressive gesture. Poor Eliphalet, propped up with a pillow and two cushions borrowed from the sofa belowstairs, looked pained as well as old. “Believe me,” he plaintively remarked, “I feel very ill. I don’t think I could play the Reverend Barnard Coles to-night, and I know I couldn’t do him justice. Really—really I should be grateful if you did not press me further.” “Last thing I should dream of doing. Only it comes a bit hard on me, after booking you solely for that date.” It being obviously useless to appeal for sympathy, Eliphalet fell back on his second line of defence. “But, don’t you see, the entire dignity of the part would be gone if he were played with a cold.” “No, I don’t,” declared Mr. Dyson. “What’s to prevent the Reverend Coles, or old Hamlet himself, for that matter, from blowing his nose like any other mortal? Now, you take my advice—lie in snug all day, and have some rum and milk, and a couple of boiled onions for lunch.” “I am a teetotaler, Mr. Dyson, and also a rigid abstainer from onions, not so much from personal distaste as from the knowledge that he whose breath is impregnated with the aroma of that vegetable loses both friends and prestige.” Suddenly Mr. Dyson’s face brightened. “By Jove,” he exclaimed, “I saw a guaranteed cure in yesterday’s _Herald_. Tip-top thing. Breaks the back of the worst cold in four hours. No humbug! There are photos of people who’ve benefited by it—in the Ad.” His lynx eye lighted on a copy of the journal in question at the moment Eliphalet was drawing it into concealment beneath the quilt. “Hi! you’ve got it there—half a minute—now, listen.” And, shaking out the folds of the crumpled news-sheet, he began to read. “Mrs. Baxter’s testimony on Enoch’s Instantaneous Cold Cure.”