w, has always endeavoured
to protect himself and his life from vulgar tongues and eyes, you must
needs browbeat my servants, and break open my house. I tell you, sir,
this is a matter for the lawyers! It shan't end here. I've sent for an
ambulance, and I'll thank you to make arrangements at once to remove this
young man to some neighbouring hospital, where, I understand, he will
have every attention."

Melrose, even at seventy, was over six feet, and as he stood towering
above the little doctor, his fine gray hair flowing back from strong
aquiline features, inflamed with a passion of wrath, he made a
sufficiently magnificent appearance. Undershaw grew a little pale, but he
fronted his accuser quietly.

"If you wish him removed, Mr. Melrose, you must take the responsibility
yourself, I shall have nothing to do with it--nor will the nurses."

"What do you mean, sir? You get yourself and me into this d----d hobble,
and then you refuse to take the only decent way out of it! I request
you--I command you--as soon as the Whitebeck ambulance comes, to remove
your patient _at once_, and the two women who are looking after him."

Undershaw slipped his hands into his pockets. The coolness of the gesture
was not lost on Melrose.

"I regret that for a few days to come I cannot sanction anything of the
kind. My business, Mr. Melrose, as a doctor, is not to kill people, but,
if I can, to cure them."

"Don't talk such nonsense to me, sir! Every one knows that any serious
case can be safely removed in a proper ambulance. The whole thing is
monstrous! By G--d, sir, what law obliges me to give up my house to a man
I know nothing about, and a whole tribe of hangers-on, besides?"

And, fairly beside himself, Melrose struck a carved chest, standing
within reach, a blow which made the china and glass objects huddled upon
it ring again.

"Well," said Undershaw slowly, "there is such a thing as--a law of
humanity. But I imagine if you turn out that man against my advice, and
he dies on the road to hospital, that some other kind of law might have
something to say to it."

"You refuse!"

The shout made the little doctor, always mindful of his patient, look
behind him, to see that the door was closed.

"He cannot be moved for three or four days," was the firm reply. "The
chances are that he would collapse on the road. But as soon as ever the
thing is possible you shall be relieved of him. I can easily find
accommodation for him at Pe