Again a brief spell of semi-consciousness--a kind of waking nightmare in which many confused sights and sounds were intermingled;--flying visions of pale worn faces full of sorrow and appeal; noises as of weeping, with stifled cries and sobs of pain;--and then Josiah McNason opened his eyes widely, to find himself lying flat on a narrow bed in the centre of a rather large room. His head rested on a small, very hard pillow,--and on this pillow squatted the Goblin with an air of being quite at ease. “Here we are in a happy ‘Home,’ McNason!” it chuckled softly in his ear--“Don’t worry! Don’t agitate yourself! Keep quiet calm! You will have every possible attention!” Josiah stared helplessly about him. He saw his clothes neatly folded and placed all together on the top of a chest of drawers,--his top-hat was also a particularly conspicuous object on a chair close by. He realised that he had been undressed and put to bed, but how this had happened he could not tell. He turned a miserable questioning gaze on the Goblin. “What--what’s this?” he stammered--“What are you going to do to me?” “I?” And the Goblin, with an injured air of perfect innocence, executed a diabolical French shrug of its shoulders--“I’m not going to do anything to you, my dear sir! I wouldn’t be so cruel! It is THEY!--THEY are going to do something to you,--but all for your good!--oh, hoo-roo--all for your good!” THEY! Who were THEY? With painful hesitation Josiah turned his eyes round about again, and presently saw, standing near him like dim figures in a blurred photograph, two men talking confidentially together--one fairly young, the other elderly,--while with them was a smart, well-set-up, rather perky looking woman attired in the conventional grey gown, spotless apron and cap of the “professional” nurse. The elderly man’s back was turned, but he seemed to be expounding some knotty point of argument to his companions with particular emphasis and gusto. “Something’s gone wrong with the Works, McNason!” said the Goblin, confidentially, “That’s what’s the matter?” “Works?” And McNason’s troubled mind immediately reverted to his huge factories--“What works?” “YOUR works!” and the Goblin leered at him sideways with a frightful grin--“Your internal works! And these two learned gentlemen are going to find out what it is. You’re ill, you know!--you’re very ill! The learned gentlemen don’t quite understand how or why you’re ill, but they’re going to find out! They’re going to slice you up and see what you’re like inside! It will be most interesting and instructive--to the learned gentlemen! It won’t interest YOU at all, because you’re to be put under chloroform, and you won’t know anything about it except when you ‘come to.’ Then you will die! But that won’t particularly matter! The operation is sure to be ‘most successful.’ An operation is always ‘successful,’ even if the patient never recovers! The medical profession must be safeguarded, you know!”