ile on his lips, and the kindly interest
in his soft brown eyes.

"You have already told me," he said, "that you have never--to your
knowledge--tasted opium in your life."

"To my knowledge," I repeated.

"You will understand directly why I speak with that reservation. Let us
go on. You are not aware of ever having taken opium. At this time,
last year, you were suffering from nervous irritation, and you slept
wretchedly at night. On the night of the birthday, however, there was an
exception to the rule--you slept soundly. Am I right, so far?"

"Quite right!"

"Can you assign any cause for the nervous suffering, and your want of
sleep?"

"I can assign no cause. Old Betteredge made a guess at the cause, I
remember. But that is hardly worth mentioning."

"Pardon me. Anything is worth mentioning in such a case as this.
Betteredge attributed your sleeplessness to something. To what?"

"To my leaving off smoking."

"Had you been an habitual smoker?"

"Yes."

"Did you leave off the habit suddenly?"

"Yes."

"Betteredge was perfectly right, Mr. Blake. When smoking is a habit
a man must have no common constitution who can leave it off suddenly
without some temporary damage to his nervous system. Your sleepless
nights are accounted for, to my mind. My next question refers to Mr.
Candy. Do you remember having entered into anything like a dispute
with him--at the birthday dinner, or afterwards--on the subject of his
profession?"

The question instantly awakened one of my dormant remembrances in
connection with the birthday festival. The foolish wrangle which took
place, on that occasion, between Mr. Candy and myself, will be found
described at much greater length than it deserves in the tenth
chapter of Betteredge's Narrative. The details there presented of the
dispute--so little had I thought of it afterwards--entirely failed to
recur to my memory. All that I could now recall, and all that I could
tell Ezra Jennings was, that I had attacked the art of medicine at the
dinner-table with sufficient rashness and sufficient pertinacity to put
even Mr. Candy out of temper for the moment. I also remembered that Lady
Verinder had interfered to stop the dispute, and that the little doctor
and I had "made it up again," as the children say, and had become as
good friends as ever, before we shook hands that night.

"There is one thing more," said Ezra Jennings, "which it is very
important I should know. Had you any reason