confine himself to a specialty, and there is nothing surgical which
Hargrave has not the skill and the audacity to do.

"Before, after, and during," murmurs the general practitioner in answer
to some interpolation of the outsider's. "I assure you, Manson, one
sees all sorts of evanescent forms of madness."

"Ah, puerperal!" throws in the other, knocking the curved grey ash from
his cigar. "But you had some case in your mind, Foster."

"Well, there was only one last week which was new to me. I had been
engaged by some people of the name of Silcoe. When the trouble came
round I went myself, for they would not hear of an assistant. The
husband who was a policeman, was sitting at the head of the bed on the
further side. 'This won't do,' said I. 'Oh yes, doctor, it must do,'
said she. 'It's quite irregular and he must go,' said I. 'It's that
or nothing,' said she. 'I won't open my mouth or stir a finger the
whole night,' said he. So it ended by my allowing him to remain, and
there he sat for eight hours on end. She was very good over the
matter, but every now and again HE would fetch a hollow groan, and I
noticed that he held his right hand just under the sheet all the time,
where I had no doubt that it was clasped by her left. When it was all
happily over, I looked at him and his face was the colour of this cigar
ash, and his head had dropped on to the edge of the pillow. Of course
I thought he had fainted with emotion, and I was just telling myself
what I thought of myself for having been such a fool as to let him stay
there, when suddenly I saw that the sheet over his hand was all soaked
with blood; I whisked it down, and there was the fellow's wrist half
cut through. The woman had one bracelet of a policeman's handcuff over
her left wrist and the other round his right one. When she had been in
pain she had twisted with all her strength and the iron had fairly
eaten into the bone of the man's arm. 'Aye, doctor,' said she, when
she saw I had noticed it. 'He's got to take his share as well as me.
Turn and turn,' said she."

"Don't you find it a very wearing branch of the profession?" asks
Foster after a pause.

"My dear fellow, it was the fear of it that drove me into lunacy work."

"Aye, and it has driven men into asylums who never found their way on
to the medical staff. I was a very shy fellow myself as a student, and
I know what it means."

"No joke that in general practice," says the alieni