_--everybody has n't an eye for a hectic, or an ear for a
cough--_non contigit cuique adire Corintheum_. 'T is n't every one can
toss pancakes, as Horace says."

"Hush--be still!" muttered Craggs, "here's the young master." And as he
spoke, a youth of about fifteen, well grown and handsome, but poorly,
even meanly clad, approached them.

"Have you seen my father? What do you think of him?" asked he, eagerly.

"'Tis a critical state he's in, your honor," said Billy, bowing; "but I
think he 'll come round--_deplation, deplation, deplation--actio, actio,
actio_; relieve the gorged vessels, and don't drown the grand hydraulic
machine, the heart--them's my sentiments."

Turning from the speaker with a look of angry impatience, the boy
whispered some words in the Corporal's ear.

"What could I do, sir?" was the answer; "it was this fellow or nothing."

"And better, a thousand times better, nothing," said the boy, "than
trust his life to the coarse ignorance of this wretched quack." And in
his passion the words were uttered loud enough for Billy to overhear
them.

"Don't be hasty, your honor," said Billy, submissively, "and don't be
unjust. The realms of disaze is like an unknown tract of country, or a
country that's only known a little, just round the coast, as it might
be; once ye're beyond that, one man is as good a guide as another,
_coeteris paribus_, that is, with 'equal lights.'"

"What have you done? Have you given him anything?" broke in the boy,
hurriedly.

"I took a bleeding from him, little short of sixteen ounces, from the
temporial," said Billy, proudly, "and I'll give him now a concoction of
meadow saffron with a pinch of saltpetre in it, to cause diaphoresis,
d'ye mind? Meanwhile, we're disgorging the arachnoid membranes with cowld
applications, and we're relievin' the cerebellum by repose. I challenge
the Hall," added Billy, stoutly, "to say is n't them the grand
principles of 'traitment.' Ah! young gentleman," said he, after a few
seconds' pause, "don't be hard on me, because I 'm poor and in rags, nor
think manely of me because I spake with a brogue, and maybe bad grammar,
for, you see, even a crayture of my kind can have a knowledge of disaze,
just as he may have a knowledge of nature, by observation. What is
sickness, after all, but just one of the phenomenons of all organic and
inorganic matter--a regular sort of shindy in a man's inside, like a
thunderstorm, or a hurry-cane outside? Watch what'