countenance, "has been recommended for patients in your condition, for
improving the power of the stomach weakened by the continued nausea of
a protracted fever. Here is a powder composed of iron-filings, a good
chalybeate, which I found lying in your wife's apartment. I have none
better in my laboratory, and would recommend to you a full dose of it
before I depart."

The electric effect of this statement was instantaneous and remarkable.
He seemed like one who had felt the sharp sting of a musket bullet sent
into his body by a hand unseen--uncertain of the nature of the wound, or
of the aim by which it is produced. A sudden suspicion relieved his
still fevered eye, which threw upon me the full blaze of staring wonder
and terror, while an accompanying uncertainty of my intention sealed his
mouth and added curiosity to his look. But I followed up my intention
resolutely and determinedly.

"Here is on the table," continued I, "a mucilaginous vehicle for its
conveyance into the stomach. I shall prepare it instantly. To seize
quickly the handle of an auspicious occasion is the soul of our
art."--(Approaching the bed with the medicine in my hand.)

"I cannot, I cannot take that medicine," he cried, wildly. "What means
this? Help me, Heaven, in this emergency! I cannot, I dare not take that
medicine."

"Why?" said I, still eyeing him intently. "Is it because there is
ground glass in it? That cannot be; because I understand it was intended
for Espras, your loving, faithful wife; and who would administer so
dreadful a poison to a creature so gentle and interesting? She is,
besides, a foreigner in our land; and who would treat the poor
unprotected stranger with the dainty that has concealed in it a lurking
death? Is this the hospitality of Britain?"

Every word was a thunderstroke to his heart. All uncertainty fled before
these flaming sarcasms, which carried, on the bolt of truth, the
keenness of his own poison. His pain became intense, and exhibited the
peculiarity of a mixture of extreme terror, directed towards me as one
that had the power of hanging him, and of intense sorrow for the injury
he had produced to the wife of his bosom, whose emaciated figure,
hanging over him in his distress, must have been deeply imprinted on
his soul. Yet it was plain that his sorrow overcame his fear; for I
saw his bosom heaving with an accumulation of hysterical emotions, which
convulsed his frame in the intense manner of the aerial