"Then go home and prepare yourself to die. Have you lived so long and still want to go on living? You're a fool." The man broke into querulous expostulation, but Walker, pointing to a woman with a sick child in her arms, told her to bring it to his desk. He asked her questions and looked at the child. "I will give you medicine," he said. He turned to the half-caste clerk. "Go into the dispensary and bring me some calomel pills." He made the child swallow one there and then and gave another to the mother. "Take the child away and keep it warm. To-morrow it will be dead or better." He leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe. "Wonderful stuff, calomel. I've saved more lives with it than all the hospital doctors at Apia put together." Walker was very proud of his skill, and with the dogmatism of ignorance had no patience with the members of the medical profession. "The sort of case I like," he said, "is the one that all the doctors have given up as hopeless. When the doctors have said they can't cure you, I say to them, 'come to me.' Did I ever tell you about the fellow who had a cancer?" "Frequently," said Mackintosh. "I got him right in three months." "You've never told me about the people you haven't cured." He finished this part of the work and went on to the rest. It was a queer medley. There was a woman who could not get on with her husband and a man who complained that his wife had run away from him. "Lucky dog," said Walker. "Most men wish their wives would too." There was a long complicated quarrel about the ownership of a few yards of land. There was a dispute about the sharing out of a catch of fish. There was a complaint against a white trader because he had given short measure. Walker listened attentively to every case, made up his mind quickly, and gave his decision. Then he would listen to nothing more; if the complainant went on he was hustled out of the office by a policeman. Mackintosh listened to it all with sullen irritation. On the whole, perhaps, it might be admitted that rough justice was done, but it exasperated the assistant that his chief trusted his instinct rather than the evidence. He would not listen to reason. He browbeat the witnesses and when they did not see what he wished them to called them thieves and liars.