Doctor Vardaman did not finish saying what he would be, but with a mechanical precision, poured the rest of the liquid into a vase of tulips. "There wasn't enough there to hurt him," he said thoughtfully. "I _thought_ he didn't seem like a plain drunk somehow. He'll be pretty sick when he comes to, but he'd be that anyway." He sought a cigar, and sat down by the fireless grate with his hands on his knees. "The question is, what next?" said he. "What is the bottom of all this? And what on earth ought I to do?" The old gentleman smoked his cigar out with his queries unanswered, and sat staring intently at the mantel-board, his mind travelling up and down in a fog of doubt and futile conjecture. The mantel-board exactly fitted the opening of the fireplace, and was covered with pale green wall-paper, having an arabesque border in white and gold all around the edges, and in the middle a design of a Watteau gentleman and lady kissing beside a fountain at the foot of a flight of marble steps with a temple in the background. Clouds, roses, swans, butterflies and turtle-doves contributed to the scene, and on a ribbon scroll beneath one read: "_Dolce far niente._" It was an interesting mantel-board and at least fifty years old. The doctor stared so long and so hard that presently he experienced no surprise at finding himself on his way to morning-service at the temple with a bunch of tulips in one hand and a bottle of Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine labelled somewhat erratically "CAUTION. POISON. _Antidote, very strong black coffee_," in the other. He was obliged to take passage in a boat with old Mrs. Botlisch, and when Huddesley came around to collect the fare, discovered to his mild annoyance that he had omitted to put on his trousers--a lapse from conventionality which nobody else noticed, however. There arose a terrific storm of thunder mainly, and someone began to be very seasick--and--and----