n of some beast less
honourable. The eyes, however, were malignantly intelligent, the hands,
ill-cared for, were long, well-shaped and capable, but of a hateful
yellow colour like the face. And through all was a sense of power, dark
and almost mediaeval. Secret, evilly wise and inhuman, he looked a being
apart, whom men might seek for help in dark purposes.

"What do you want--medicine?" he muttered at last, wiping his beard and
mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.

Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the
old man's head; at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments
on the walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the
cheroot slowly from his mouth, he said:

"Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a
trap."

The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a "shin-plaster" was a
money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.

"I've got some," he growled in reply, "but they cost twenty-five cents
each. You can have them for your friend at the price."

"I want eight thousand of them from you. He's hurt pretty bad," was the
dogged, dry answer.

The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out
sharply through half-closed lids. "There's plenty of wanting and not
much getting in this world," he rejoined, with a leer of contempt,
and spat on the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes
indicated a mind ill at ease.

Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very
hard, but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.

"Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the
devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you."

"You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a
Bedouin in his rage.

"I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?"

"I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the
hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.

"Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out, we'll
come to the revelations of the Beast." There was a silence, in which the
gross impostor shifted heavily in his seat, while a hand twitched across
the mouth, and then caught at the breast of the threadbare black coat
abstractedly.

Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers.
He spoke almost confidentially, as to some