by your professional
ability."

"I'm your humble slave, sir," said Billy, with a deep, rich brogue; and
the manner of the speaker, and his accent, seemed so to surprise Upton
that he continued to stare at him fixedly for some seconds without
speaking.

"You studied in Scotland, I believe?" said he, with one of the most
engaging smiles, while he hazarded the question.

"Indeed, then, I did not, sir," said Billy, with a heavy sigh; "all I
know of the _ars medicatrix_ I picked up,--_currendo per campos_,--as
one may say, vagabondizing through life, and watching my opportunities.
Nature gave me the Hippocratic turn, and I did my best to improve it."

"So that you never took out a regular diploma?" said Sir Horace, with
another and still blander smile.

"Sorra one, sir! I 'm a doctor just as a man is a poet,--by sheer
janius! 'T is the study of nature makes both one and the other; that is,
when there's the raal stuff,--the _divinus afflatus_,--inside. Without
you have that, you 're only a rhymester or a quack."

"You would, then, trace a parallel between them?" said Upton,
graciously.

"To be sure, sir! Ould Heyric says that the poet and the physician is
one:--

"'For he who reads the clouded skies,
And knows the utterings of the deep,
Can surely see in human eyes
The sorrows that so heart-locked sleep.'

The human system is just a kind of universe of its own; and the very
same faculties that investigate the laws of nature in one case is good
in the other."

"I don't think the author of 'King Arthur' supports your theory," said
Upton, gently.

"Blackmoor was an ass; but maybe he was as great a bosthoon in physic as
in poetry," rejoined Billy, promptly.

"Well, Doctor," said Sir Horace, with one of those plaintive sighs in
which he habitually opened the narrative of his own suffering, "let us
descend to meaner things, and talk of myself. You see before you
one who, in some degree, is the reproach of medicine. That file of
prescriptions beside you will show that I have consulted almost every
celebrity in Europe; and that I have done so unsuccessfully, it is
only necessary that you should look on these worn looks--these wasted
fingers--this sickly, feeble frame. Vouchsafe me a patient hearing for
a few moments, while I give you some insight into one of the most
intricate cases, perhaps, that has ever engaged the faculty."

It is not our intention to follow Sir Horace through his stat