me, for your shoes. 'Ssh!"

Saxham was lifting up the great stooping shoulders, and beginning to
speak in a voice totally different from that of the man known in
Gueldersdorp as the Dop Doctor. Clear, ringing, concise, the sentences
left his lips:

"Gentlemen, I invite your attention to a case of involuntary simulation of
the symptoms distinguishing pulmonary tuberculosis by a patient suffering
from a grave disease of totally different and possibly much less malignant
character. Oblige me by stepping nearer!"

They crowded about the bed like eager students.

"In order to show what false conclusions loose modes of reasoning and the
habitual reliance upon precedent may lead to, take the instance of the
consulting physician to whom some years ago this young man, now barely
thirty, and reduced, as you may see for yourselves, to the final extremity
of physical decline, resorted."

"I would gie five shillin' if the man could hear his ain judgment!"
murmured the Chief Medical Officer; for he had gleaned from a whispered
answer of Julius's the omnipotent name of Sir Jedbury Fargoe. "Toch!" He
chuckled dryly. Saxham went on:

"The consulting patient suffers from cough, painful and racking, from
impaired digestive power, from increasing debility, fever, and
night-sweats. He visits the specialist, convinced that he is consumptive,
he receives confirmation of his convictions, and you see him to-day
presenting the appearance, and reproducing all the symptoms of a patient
in consumption's final stage. Possibly the germs of tuberculosis may be
dormant in his organisation, waiting the opportunity to develop into
activity! Possibly--a very remote possibility--the disease may have
already attacked some organ of his body! But--and upon this point I can
take my stand with the confidence of absolute certainty--the lungs of this
so-called pulmonary sufferer are absolutely sound!"

"My certie! Send I may live to foregather wi' Sir Jedbury Fargoe!" the
Chief Medical Officer prayed inaudibly. "He will gang to the next
International Consumption Congress wi' a smaller conceit of himsel', or my
name's no Duncan Taggart!"

The lecturer, absorbed in his subject, lifted his hand to silence the
murmur, and pursued:

"From what disease, then, is this man suffering? Logical and progressive
conclusions drawn from experience, and based upon the local enlargement
which the physicians previously consulted have apparently failed to
perceive, lead