failed, she led the
way to the great man's bedroom.

"Well, doctor! well, doctor! well, doctor!" was the greeting with
which our son of Galen was saluted some time before he entered the
sick-room. His approaching step was heard, and thus the ci-devant
Barchester stone-mason saluted his coming friend. The voice was loud
and powerful, but not clear and sonorous. What voice that is nurtured
on brandy can ever be clear? It had about it a peculiar huskiness, a
dissipated guttural tone, which Thorne immediately recognised, and
recognised as being more marked, more guttural, and more husky than
heretofore.

"So you've smelt me out, have you, and come for your fee? Ha! ha!
ha! Well, I have had a sharpish bout of it, as her ladyship there
no doubt has told you. Let her alone to make the worst of it. But,
you see, you're too late, man. I've bilked the old gentleman again
without troubling you."

"Anyway, I'm glad you're something better, Scatcherd."

"Something! I don't know what you call something. I never was better
in my life. Ask Winterbones there."

"Indeed, now, Scatcherd, you ain't; you're bad enough if you only
knew it. And as for Winterbones, he has no business here up in your
bedroom, which stinks of gin so, it does. Don't you believe him,
doctor; he ain't well, nor yet nigh well."

Winterbones, when the above ill-natured allusion was made to
the aroma coming from his libations, might be seen to deposit
surreptitiously beneath the little table at which he sat, the cup
with which he had performed them.

The doctor, in the meantime, had taken Sir Roger's hand on the
pretext of feeling his pulse, but was drawing quite as much
information from the touch of the sick man's skin, and the look of
the sick man's eye.

"I think Mr Winterbones had better go back to the London office,"
said he. "Lady Scatcherd will be your best clerk for some time, Sir
Roger."

"Then I'll be d---- if Mr Winterbones does anything of the kind,"
said he; "so there's an end of that."

"Very well," said the doctor. "A man can die but once. It is my duty
to suggest measures for putting off the ceremony as long as possible.
Perhaps, however, you may wish to hasten it."

"Well, I am not very anxious about it, one way or the other," said
Scatcherd. And as he spoke there came a fierce gleam from his eye,
which seemed to say--"If that's the bugbear with which you wish to
frighten me, you will find that you are mistaken."

"Now, doctor, don'