se
convulsive flurries which come with the semi-unconscious stage. He
kicked and plunged and struck out with both hands. Over with a crash
went the little table which held the candles, and in an instant we were
left in total darkness. You can think what a rush and a scurry there
was, one to pick up the table, one to find the matches, and some to
restrain the patient who was still dashing himself about. He was held
down by two dressers, the chloroform was pushed, and by the time the
candles were relit, his incoherent, half-smothered shoutings had
changed to a stertorous snore. His head was turned on the pillow and
the towel was still kept over his face while the operation was carried
through. Then the towel was withdrawn, and you can conceive our
amazement when we looked upon the face of M'Namara.

"How did it happen? Why, simply enough. As the candles went over, the
chloroformist had stopped for an instant and had tried to catch them.
The patient, just as the light went out, had rolled off and under the
table. Poor M'Namara, clinging frantically to him, had been dragged
across it, and the chloroformist, feeling him there, had naturally
claped the towel across his mouth and nose. The others had secured
him, and the more he roared and kicked the more they drenched him with
chloroform. Walker was very nice about it, and made the most handsome
apologies. He offered to do a plastic on the spot, and make as good an
ear as he could, but M'Namara had had enough of it. As to the patient,
we found him sleeping placidly under the table, with the ends of the
blanket screening him on both sides. Walker sent M'Namara round his
ear next day in a jar of methylated spirit, but Mac's wife was very
angry about it, and it led to a good deal of ill-feeling.

"Some people say that the more one has to do with human nature, and the
closer one is brought in contact with it, the less one thinks of it. I
don't believe that those who know most would uphold that view. My own
experience is dead against it. I was brought up in the
miserable-mortal-clay school of theology, and yet here I am, after
thirty years of intimate acquaintance with humanity, filled with
respect for it. The evil lies commonly upon the surface. The deeper
strata are good. A hundred times I have seen folk condemned to death
as suddenly as poor Walker was. Sometimes it was to blindness or to
mutilations which are worse than death. Men and women, they almost