on, but we
gave him three cheers as he made his way back to his seat. Then we went
on with the dangers of Placenta Praevia.

He was not a man who drank hard, but a little drink would have a very
great effect upon him. Then it was that the ideas would surge from his
brain, each more fantastic and ingenious than the last. And if ever
he did get beyond the borderland he would do the most amazing things.
Sometimes it was the fighting instinct that would possess him,
sometimes the preaching, and sometimes the comic, or they might come
in succession, replacing each other so rapidly as to bewilder his
companions. Intoxication brought all kinds of queer little peculiarities
with it. One of them was that he could walk or run perfectly straight,
but that there always came a time when he unconsciously returned upon
his tracks and retraced his steps again. This had a strange effect
sometimes, as in the instance which I am about to tell you.

Very sober to outward seeming, but in a frenzy within, he went down to
the station one night, and, stooping to the pigeon-hole, he asked the
ticket-clerk, in the suavest voice, whether he could tell him how far
it was to London. The official put forward his face to reply when
Cullingworth drove his fist through the little hole with the force of a
piston. The clerk flew backwards off his stool, and his yell of pain and
indignation brought some police and railway men to his assistance.
They pursued Cullingworth; but he, as active and as fit as a greyhound,
outraced them all, and vanished into the darkness, down the long,
straight street. The pursuers had stopped, and were gathered in a knot
talking the matter over, when, looking up, they saw, to their amazement,
the man whom they were after, running at the top of his speed in their
direction. His little peculiarity had asserted itself, you see, and
he had unconsciously turned in his flight. They tripped him up, flung
themselves upon him, and after a long and desperate struggle dragged
him to the police station. He was charged before the magistrate next
morning, but made such a brilliant speech from the dock in his own
defence that he carried the Court with him, and escaped with a nominal
fine. At his invitation, the witnesses and the police trooped after
him to the nearest hotel, and the affair ended in universal
whisky-and-sodas.

Well, now, if, after all these illustrations, I have failed to give
you some notion of the man, able, magnetic, u