Such a question, though so frequently put, remains still one of tremendous difficulty to the professors of the healing art, inasmuch as, on the one hand, they never can like, by acknowledging that there is great danger, to run the risk of other advice being called in, and yet they neither choose to lose the credit which may accrue from curing a bad case, nor to incur the blame that will attach to them if their patient dies without their having admitted his peril. However, as vanity and covetousness are, generally speaking, stronger passions than apprehension, the followers of Esculapius usually seem to prefer running all risks, rather than have their cases interfered with by another practitioner. In the present instance, it occurred that the apothecary was really in the right when he informed the worthy landlord that, although his guest had certainly a sharp fever upon him, yet he did not see any present danger. Thus passed over the day. No one was written to; and, before night, Beauchamp was not in a state to write to any one himself, having become completely delirious. The apothecary grew a little frightened; but as the landlord did not know the precise address of Beauchamp's friends, and as the patient could not give it himself, there was no remedy but patience and perseverance. The delirium continued, with but little interval, for two days; but as the medical man was really a person of skill, his patient's constitution excellent, and the fever not very malignant in its nature, favorable symptoms began to show themselves sooner than could have been expected, and, at the end of five days more, the young gentleman was pronounced convalescent. Though for some time he felt himself very weak, and incapable of much mental exertion, yet, from the moment the delirium left him, Henry Beauchamp found his thoughts much clearer and more exact than they had been since the day of his leaving Emberton; and, as he considered the various events which had taken place, a number of circumstances which the reader's mind may easily recall, without minute recapitulation, led him to suspect that his uncle's lawyer, if not his uncle himself, had increased, if not created, many of those difficulties which, combined with accidental occurrences, had overwhelmed Sir Sidney Delaware and his family in ruin and in sorrow.