I must detain you, Captain Ormiston, and
that on rather unpleasant business."

Julius March had risen to his feet. "You--you have no fresh cause for
anxiety about Lady Calmady?" he said hurriedly.

The doctor glanced up at the tall, spare, black figure and dark,
sensitive face with a half-sneering, half-pitying smile.

"Oh no, no!" he replied; "Lady Calmady's going on splendidly. And it is
to guard, just as far as we can, against cause for anxiety later, that
I want to speak to Captain Ormiston now. We've got to be prepared for
certain contingencies. Don't you go, Mr. March. You may as well hear
what I've to say. It will interest you particularly, I fancy, after one
or two things you have told us to-night!"

"Sit down, Julius, please."--Ormiston would have liked to maintain that
same insolence of demeanour, but it gave before an apprehension of
serious issues. He looked hard at the doctor, cudgeling his brains as
to what the latter's enigmatic speech might mean--divined, put the idea
away as inadmissible, returned to it, then said angrily:--"There's
nothing wrong with the child, of course?"

Dr. Knott turned his chair sideways to the table and shaded his face
with his thick, square hand.

"Well, that depends on what you call wrong," he slowly replied.

"It's not ill?" Ormiston said.

"The baby's as well as you or I--better, in fact, than I am, for I am
confoundedly touched up with gout. Bear that in mind, Captain
Ormiston--that the child is well, I mean, not that I am gouty. I want
you to definitely remember that, you and Mr. March."

"Well, then, what on earth is the matter?" Ormiston asked sharply. "You
don't mean to imply it is injured in any way, deformed?"

Dr. Knott let his hand drop on the table. He nodded his head. Ormiston
perceived, and it moved him strangely, that the doctor's eyes were wet.

"Not deformed," he answered. "Technically you can hardly call it that,
but maimed."

"Badly?"

"Well, that's a matter of opinion. You or I should think it bad enough,
I fancy, if we found ourselves in the same boat." He settled himself
back in his chair.--"You had better understand it quite clearly," he
continued, "at least as clearly as I can put it to you. There comes a
point where I cannot explain the facts but only state them. You have
heard of spontaneous amputation?"

Across Ormiston's mind came the remembrance of a litter of puppies he
had seen in the sanctum of the veterinary surgeon of his regim