ll taken off to London together?" I heard him ask in his most cheerful
tones. "A glass of wine and a bit of bread and cheese won't do you any
harm, gentlemen, if you are as hungry as I am."

"If you want to eat and drink, order the victuals at once," replied one
of the runners, sulkily. "We don't happen to want anything ourselves."

"Sorry for it," said the doctor. "I have some of the best old Madeira in
England."

"Like enough," retorted the officer sarcastically. "But you see we are
not quite such fools as we look; and we have heard of such a thing, in
our time, as hocussed wine."

"O fie! fie!" exclaimed the doctor merrily. "Remember how well I am
behaving myself, and don't wound my feelings by suspecting me of such
shocking treachery as that!"

He moved to a corner of the room behind him, and touched a knob in the
wall which I had never before observed. A bell rang directly, which had
a new tone in it to my ears.

"Too bad," said the doctor, turning round again to the runners; "really
too bad, gentlemen, to suspect me of that!"

Shaking his head deprecatingly, he moved back to the corner, pulled
aside something in the wall, disclosed the mouth of a pipe which was a
perfect novelty to me, and called down it.

"Moses!"

It was the first time I had heard that name in the house.

"Who is Moses?" inquired the officers both together, advancing on him
suspiciously.

"Only my servant," answered the doctor. He turned once more to the pipe,
and called down it:

"Bring up the Stilton Cheese, and a bottle of the Old Madeira."

The cheese we had in use at that time was of purely Dutch extraction.
I remembered Port, Sherry, and Claret in my palmy dinner-days at
the doctor's family-table; but certainly not Old Madeira. Perhaps
he selfishly kept his best wine and his choicest cheese for his own
consumption.

"Sam," said one of the runners to the other, "you look to our civil
friend here, and I'll grab Moses when he brings up the lunch."

"Would you like to see what the operation of coining is, while my man
is getting the lunch ready?" said the doctor. "It may be of use to me
at the trial, if you can testify that I afforded you every facility
for finding out anything you might want to know. Only mention my polite
anxiety to make things easy and instructive from the very first, and
I may get recommended to mercy. See here--this queer-looking machine,
gentlemen (from which two of my men derive their nicknames), is w