die!"

"In that case you had better bestir yourself," he said. "There is but
one remedy, and that we must employ. Had it not been for your folly I
should have it with me now. As it is, you must go out and search the
town for it. Give me writing materials."

These were on a neighbouring table, and when I had put them before him
he seized the pen and scrawled something upon a sheet of notepaper, then
folding it, he handed it to me.

"Take that with all speed to a chemist," he said. "Tell him to be
particularly careful that the drugs are fresh, and bring it back with
you as soon as you can. In all probability you will have a difficulty in
procuring it, but you must do so somewhere. Rest assured of this, that
if she does not receive it within an hour nothing can possibly save
her."

"I will be back in less than half that time," I answered, and hastened
from the room.

From a man in the street I inquired the address of the nearest chemist,
and, as soon as he had directed me, hastened thither as fast as my legs
could carry me. Entering the shop, I threw the prescription upon the
counter, and in my impatience could have struck the man for his slowness
in picking it up. If his life had depended upon his deciphering it
properly he could not have taken longer to read it. Before he had got to
the end of it my impatience had reached boiling heat.

"Come, come," I said, "are you going to make it up or not? It is for an
urgent case, and I have wasted ten minutes already."

The man glanced at the paper again, smoothed it out between his fat
fingers, and shook his head until I thought his glasses would have
dropped from his nose.

"I can not do it," he said at length. "Two of the drugs I do not keep
in stock. Indeed, I do not know that I ever saw another prescription
like it."

"Why did you not say so at once?" I cried angrily, and snatching the
paper from his hand, I dashed madly out and along the pavement. At the
end of the street was another shop, which I entered. On the door it was
set forth that English, French and German were spoken there. I was not
going to risk a waste of time on either of the two first, however, but
opened upon the man in his own language. He was very small, with an
unwholesome complexion, and was the possessor of a nose large enough to
have entitled him to the warmest esteem of the great Napoleon. He took
the prescription, read it through in a quarter of the time taken by the
other man, and then