'Don't be an ass, Luscombe,' said the Scotchman; 'I will tell you everything presently, but can't you see that----' 'I can see that he's going to live,' I interrupted. 'His face is more natural; it doesn't look so rigid. I believe there is colour coming into his lips.' 'Find your way into the kitchen, there are some servants there, and bring some hot water immediately.' For the next hour, I scarcely remember anything that happened. I imagine that I was so excited that my experiences left no definite impress upon my brain. I have indistinct remembrances of alternating between hope and despair, between joy and sorrow. I remember, too, that I was called upon to perform certain actions, but to this day I do not know what they were. I was more like an automaton than a man. At the end of the hour, however, Colonel McClure accompanied me into my bedroom, which, as I have said, adjoined that of Edgecumbe. 'We've done it, my boy,' he said, and I noted the satisfaction in his voice. 'He will live, then?' He nodded. 'Barring accidents, he will. But it's a mystery to me.' 'What is a mystery?' 'I hardly like to tell you. But you are no hysterical woman, and you have a steady head on you. Until an hour and a half ago, I was acting in the dark, acting blindly. Even now I have no proof of anything. You say your friend was in India?' 'I have told you all I know,' was my answer. 'I spent twelve years there,' went on the colonel. 'A great part of the time I was with native regiments, and I have had some peculiar experiences. India's a strange country, and in many things the people there can teach us Westerners a lot. Look here, why did you come for me?' 'Instinct,' I replied. 'But instinct has a basis in reason.' 'Has it? I am not enough of a psychologist to answer that question. Tell me why you are asking me all this.' 'Because I am afraid to tell you what is in my mind. Do you remember what Merril said?' 'Yes,' I replied; 'he said that according to symptoms my friend had been poisoned. But he didn't see how it could possibly be, and he said that the case was completely beyond him.' 'Exactly. When I went into that room, I of course had your words in my mind. India has a hundred poisons unknown to the West, many of them are subtle, almost undiscoverable. I called to my mind what I had learned in India, what I had seen and done there. Frankly, I don't understand your friend's case. Had it been in India, I should have understood it, and what was possible, ay, what would have amounted to certainty there, was utterly impossible in England--at least, so it seemed to me. But I acted on the assumption that I was in India.' 'You mean that you injected an antidote for a poison that you know of?' I ventured. He looked at me steadily for a few seconds, but he did not speak. 'Now look here, Luscombe,' he said, after a long silence, 'I hesitated to tell you this, because it is a serious business.' I nodded.