“Take hold of this fellow,” said the house surgeon to the porters, “and hold him while I get a stomach pump.” The porters, specially qualified for dealing with midnight drunks, obeyed. There was a splendid struggle in which the foaming cabby was pitched out into the road, —ing their —ing eyes to Hell. The bandaged Wade was carried solemnly upstairs on his stretcher and brought round with whisky in the house surgeon’s room, a chamber full of Olympian card-players, pickled with cigar-smoke and the fumes of alcohol. Some one, it was the cavalier, began to play the piano. Edwin seized the opportunity to recite his sonnet, until W.G. laid a monstrous hand on his mouth. That vision ended, and to it succeeded one of cool, deserted streets with far too many kerb-stones for Edwin’s liking, and then the dishevelled sitting-room in W.G.’s digs in which they had dressed with a pale gas-jet hissing and flaring and a momentary impression of W.G. asking him where he’d put the damned corkscrew. Edwin remembered rising to a brilliant extreme of wit. “Am I your corkscrew’s keeper?” he said; and while he was explaining at length the aptness of his mot W.G. knocked the neck off the bottle with his poker, eclipsing any possible verbal brilliance. In the middle of the night Edwin woke and staggered in the dark to the washhand-stand, where he drank a draught of water, so cool and sweet as to be astonishing, until he remembered that it had possibly come from the mountains beyond Felindre. W.G. was snoring heavily on the bed that he had just left. W.G.’s snoring got on his nerves so that he had to prod him in the ribs and wake him, a proceeding that W.G. seemed unjustly to resent. “I say, W.G.,” he said, “do you think I was drunk?” “Drunk?” said W.G. “Good God, you didn’t wake me to ask me that? You’ll know all right in the morning.” Edwin only knew that his head was splitting and that he was hellishly cold. CHAPTER IV SCIENCE I W.G.’s prophecy that Edwin would know all about it in the morning proved correct; but it was some consolation to him to know that he shared the experience with his friends. All the next day he went about his work with Maskew feeling a little light-headed, and a peculiar weakness in the legs made him disinclined for any exertion that could be avoided. Maskew recovered himself more easily; but W.G., who never did anything by halves, solemnly embarked on a “bust” that lasted for a whole week.