g up and panting
after attempting to keep up with Johnson for five minutes. "I would go
quicker if I could, my dear sir, and I quite sympathise with your
anxiety, but really I can't manage it."

So Johnson, on fire with impatience, had to slow down until they
reached the New North Road, when he ran ahead and had the door open for
the doctor when he came. He heard the two meet outside the bed-room,
and caught scraps of their conversation. "Sorry to knock you up--nasty
case--decent people." Then it sank into a mumble and the door closed
behind them.

Johnson sat up in his chair now, listening keenly, for he knew that a
crisis must be at hand. He heard the two doctors moving about, and was
able to distinguish the step of Pritchard, which had a drag in it, from
the clean, crisp sound of the other's footfall. There was silence for
a few minutes and then a curious drunken, mumbling sing-song voice came
quavering up, very unlike anything which he had heard hitherto. At the
same time a sweetish, insidious scent, imperceptible perhaps to any
nerves less strained than his, crept down the stairs and penetrated
into the room. The voice dwindled into a mere drone and finally sank
away into silence, and Johnson gave a long sigh of relief, for he knew
that the drug had done its work and that, come what might, there should
be no more pain for the sufferer.

But soon the silence became even more trying to him than the cries had
been. He had no clue now as to what was going on, and his mind swarmed
with horrible possibilities. He rose and went to the bottom of the
stairs again. He heard the clink of metal against metal, and the
subdued murmur of the doctors' voices. Then he heard Mrs. Peyton say
something, in a tone as of fear or expostulation, and again the doctors
murmured together. For twenty minutes he stood there leaning against
the wall, listening to the occasional rumbles of talk without being
able to catch a word of it. And then of a sudden there rose out of the
silence the strangest little piping cry, and Mrs. Peyton screamed out
in her delight and the man ran into the parlour and flung himself down
upon the horse-hair sofa, drumming his heels on it in his ecstasy.

But often the great cat Fate lets us go only to clutch us again in a
fiercer grip. As minute after minute passed and still no sound came
from above save those thin, glutinous cries, Johnson cooled from his
frenzy of joy, and lay breathless with his