othes were patched and worn, the coat-front was
spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and
long, giving him what would have been the look of a mangy lion but that
the face had the expression of some beast less honorable. The eyes,
however, were malignantly intelligent; the hands, ill-cared for, were
long, well-shaped, and capable, but of a hateful yellow color like the
face. And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost mediaeval.
Secret, evilly wise, and inhuman, he looked a being apart, whom men might
seek for help in dark purposes.

"What do you want--medicine?" he muttered at last, wiping his beard and
mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.

Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the old
man's head, at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments on the
walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the cheroot slowly
from his mouth, he said:

"Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a
trap."

The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a "shin-plaster" was a
money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.

"I've got some," he growled in reply, "but they cost twenty-five cents
each. You can have them for your friend at the price."

"I want eight thousand of them from you. He's hurt pretty bad," was the
dogged, dry answer.

The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out
sharply through half-closed lids. "There's plenty of wanting and not much
getting in this world," he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and spat on
the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes indicated a mind
ill at ease.

Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very hard,
but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.

"Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the
devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you."

"You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a
Bedouin in his rage.

"I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?"

"I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the
hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.

"Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out we'll come
to the revelations of the Beast."

There was a silence, in which the gross impostor shifted heavily in his
seat, while a ha