ost sight of the case and
don't know what became of it, but I'll never forget the look in her
eyes."

"That's creepy," says Dr. Foster. "But I think one of my experiences
would run it close. Shortly after I put up my plate I had a visit from
a little hunch-backed woman who wished me to come and attend to her
sister in her trouble. When I reached the house, which was a very poor
one, I found two other little hunched-backed women, exactly like the
first, waiting for me in the sitting-room. Not one of them said a
word, but my companion took the lamp and walked upstairs with her two
sisters behind her, and me bringing up the rear. I can see those three
queer shadows cast by the lamp upon the wall as clearly as I can see
that tobacco pouch. In the room above was the fourth sister, a
remarkably beautiful girl in evident need of my assistance. There was
no wedding ring upon her finger. The three deformed sisters seated
themselves round the room, like so many graven images, and all night
not one of them opened her mouth. I'm not romancing, Hargrave; this is
absolute fact. In the early morning a fearful thunderstorm broke out,
one of the most violent I have ever known. The little garret burned
blue with the lightning, and thunder roared and rattled as if it were
on the very roof of the house. It wasn't much of a lamp I had, and it
was a queer thing when a spurt of lightning came to see those three
twisted figures sitting round the walls, or to have the voice of my
patient drowned by the booming of the thunder. By Jove! I don't mind
telling you that there was a time when I nearly bolted from the room.
All came right in the end, but I never heard the true story of the
unfortunate beauty and her three crippled sisters."

"That's the worst of these medical stories," sighs the outsider. "They
never seem to have an end."

"When a man is up to his neck in practice, my boy, he has no time to
gratify his private curiosity. Things shoot across him and he gets a
glimpse of them, only to recall them, perhaps, at some quiet moment
like this. But I've always felt, Manson, that your line had as much of
the terrible in it as any other."

"More," groans the alienist. "A disease of the body is bad enough, but
this seems to be a disease of the soul. Is it not a shocking thing--a
thing to drive a reasoning man into absolute Materialism--to think that
you may have a fine, noble fellow with every divine instinct and that
some