sending it
flying."

"No, Major; no, I assure you I--"

"Don't prevaricate with me, sir. There's the string broken, and there's
the glass yonder. I--I can forgive a certain amount of irritability in
a sick man; but this is impish mischief, sir--the action of a demented
boy. How dare you, sir? What the dickens do you mean?"

"Major, I assure you I wouldn't do such a thing," cried Bracy wildly.

"Don't tell me," muttered the Major, striding across to where his glass
lay, and picking it up. "Cracked, sir, cracked."

"Indeed, no, Major; I am sure I am quite--"

"I didn't say you were, sir: but my glass. The last I have, and not a
chance of replacing it. How am I to go on duty? Why, you must be mad,
sir. You might have struck me."

The Major's words were so loud and excited that they brought Mrs Gee to
the door, to glance in and hurry away, with the result that directly
after the Doctor appeared.

"What's the matter?" he cried. "Bracy worse?"

"Worse, sir?" cried the Major, who was now in a towering rage, the
broken glass, a part of which had come out of the frame into his hand,
having completely overset his equanimity. "Worse, sir? Look at that."

"Broken your eyeglass?" said the Doctor angrily, "and a good job too.
You can see right enough, for we tested your eyes. Only a piece of
confounded puppyism, of which you ought to be ashamed."

"Doctor Morton," cried the Major, puffing out his cheeks, his red face
growing mottled in his anger. "How dare you!"

"How dare I, sir?" cried the Doctor, who was quite as angry. "How dare
you come here, disturbing my patients, and turning the place into a
bear-garden just because you have dropped your idiotic eyeglass and
broken it? Do you know I have poor fellows in the next room in a
precarious state?"

"What! Dropped my eyeglass, sir? I tell you, this lunatic here struck
at me, sir, and knocked the glass flying."

"What!" cried the Doctor. "Did you do that, Bracy?"

"No, no, Doctor," stammered the young man; "I assure you I--I--"

"I--I--I!" roared the Major. "How dare you deny it, sir! He did,
Doctor. The fellow's stark staring mad, and ought to be in a
strait-waistcoat. He isn't safe. He might have blinded me. I came in
here quite out of sympathy, to sit with him a little while, and this is
the treatment I received. Suppose I had lost my sight."

"Look here, Major," said the Doctor, turning to him, after stepping to
the bed and laying hi