McNason heard, and in an instant became a prey to the most violent access of nervous horror. “I’m not ill!” he said fiercely. “There’s nothing whatever the matter with me! How dare you say there is! It’s all a mistake--an abominable mistake! I’ve never suffered from any illness except gout and indigestion--never!--there’s no operation needed for such ailments!--what the devil do you mean by bringing me here?” “You _will_ talk about the devil!” And the Goblin shook its tasselled cap at him reproachfully--“Don’t say I mentioned him first! You’re ill, I tell you!--you’re more seriously ill than your old friend Willie Dove, and you’re here _because_ you’re ill! ‘To this complexion must we come at last’! Oh Beelzebub! They don’t know whether it’s cancer or appendicitis with YOU!” “Look here!” almost shouted Josiah, addressing himself to the two men, who, with the nurse, still stood together talking, but who appeared not to hear him--“Take me out of this place directly! I’ve been brought here on false pretences! I’m not ill! I don’t want an operation! I won’t be operated upon! I’ll--I’ll----!” Here exhausted, he sank back on his hard pillow impotently clenching his hands in a paroxysm of rage and fear. The Goblin grinned. “Now, McNason, keep cool!” it said--“Don’t show temper! Doctors don’t like that sort of thing. They call it ‘nerves’ and they give you a soothing draught. Besides, these two eminent personages who are just now discussing your ‘case’ can’t hear you, and if they could they wouldn’t listen. One’s a ‘Sir.’ He’s a clever man, of course, or he wouldn’t be a ‘Sir.’ It’s a little unpleasant that the title puts him on the same rank with any provincial Mayor who has presented an address to the Sovereign! But it can’t be helped. There’s no suitable honour in this country for _merely_ intellectual and scientific persons! Now about your case----” “I’ve _no_ case!” groaned the wretched millionaire--“No case at all----” “You _are_ a case!” declared the Goblin--“A whole case in yourself! A case of a man gone wrong! A case of a human creature who has a stone in the place where his heart ought to be!--a hard, heavy stone, without a pulse of love or kindness in it! A case? Oh Beelzebub! I should think you _are_ a case! Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up--that’s the broad-backed elderly gentleman over there,--thinks you’ve got something ‘malignant’ inside! Oh hoo-roo-oo-oo! I should think you had! Sir Slasher believes it’s cancer. But if it is, they’ll never find it, McNason! No!--_your_ cancer’s on the mind!--and they’ll never cut _that_ out! But they’re going to have a good try!” Josiah moaned helplessly.