William retired. Rames fell back upon his sofa. He meant to lie there prone upon his back, even if his visitor held all the votes of Ludsey in the hollow of his hand. Then the door opened and was shut again. A little, puckish old man stood in the room, danced lightly on his feet, skipped in the air, twirled before Captain Rames's astonished eyes and finally struck an inviting attitude, both arms extended and one foot advanced, like the pictures of the quack doctors in the newspaper advertisements. "Oh, he's out of a lunatic asylum," Captain Rames almost groaned aloud. "He won't even have a vote." The little man skimmed forward with agility, fixing a bright and twinkling pair of eyes upon the prostrate candidate. "How old do you think I am?" he asked, and he whirled his arms. "You are the youngest thing I have ever seen," replied Rames with conviction. "I didn't know that people were even born as young as you are." "I am seventy-three," exclaimed the little man with a chuckle. He squared up at an imaginary antagonist and delivered a deadly blow in the air. "Do you mind not doing that!" said Rames mildly. "My nerves are not what they should be, and if you do it again I shall probably cry. I suppose that you are M. Poizat----" "I am, sir," said the little man. He changed his tactics. He no longer whirled his arms in the air. He advanced to the sofa and suddenly put up his foot on the edge. "Feel my calf!" he said abruptly. Captain Rames meekly obeyed. "You ought to have a medal," he said languidly. "You really ought. At seventy-three, too! For myself I am like butter, and rather inferior butter, on a very hot day." M. Poizat nodded his head. "I know. That's why I am here!" He looked about the room and with the importance of a conspirator he drew out of his pocket a medicine bottle filled with a brown liquid. "Why am I so young?" he asked. "Why is my leg of iron? Listen to my voice. Why is it so clear?--It's all 'Lungatine,'" and with immense pride he reverently placed the bottle on the mantel-shelf. He turned again to Captain Rames. "I heard you to-night. I suffered with you. What a voice! How harsh! How terrible! And yet what good words if only one could have heard them! I said to myself: 'That poor man. I can cure him. He does not know of Lungatine. He makes us all uncomfortable because he does not know of Lungatine.' So I ran home and brought a bottle." "It's very good of you, I am sure," said Rames, "But look!" He pointed to a table. Throat sprays, tonics, lozenges, encumbered it. "The paraphernalia of a candidate," he said. M. Poizat smiled contemptuously. He drew from his breast pocket a sheaf of letters. "See how many in Ludsey owe their health to me!" he cried, and he gave the letters to Rames, who read them over with an 'oh' and an 'ah' of intense admiration when any particularly startling cure was gratefully recorded. "You are a chemist here I suppose--naturalized, of course?" asked Captain Rames.