s child had been
seized with fever, and had become delirious. Hearing that I was at the
mayor's house, he had hurried thither in search of me.

I felt as if it were almost a relief to the troubled and haunting
thoughts which tormented me, to be summoned to the exercise of a
familiar knowledge. I hastened to the bedside of the little sufferer,
and soon forgot all else in the anxious struggle for a human life. The
struggle promised to be successful; the worst symptoms began to yield
to remedies prompt and energetic, if simple. I remained at the house,
rather to comfort and support the parents, than because my continued
attendance was absolutely needed, till the night was well-nigh gone; and
all cause of immediate danger having subsided, I then found myself once
more in the streets. An atmosphere palely clear in the gray of dawn had
succeeded to the thunder-clouds of the stormy night; the streetlamps,
here and there, burned wan and still. I was walking slowly and wearily,
so tired out that I was scarcely conscious of my own thoughts, when, in
a narrow lane, my feet stopped almost mechanically before a human form
stretched at full length in the centre of the road right in my path. The
form was dark in the shadow thrown from the neighbouring houses. "Some
poor drunkard," thought I, and the humanity inseparable from my calling
not allowing me to leave a fellow-creature thus exposed to the risk
of being run over by the first drowsy wagoner who might pass along
the thoroughfare, I stooped to rouse and to lift the form. What was
my horror when my eyes met the rigid stare of a dead man's. I started,
looked again; it was the face of Sir Philip Derval! He was lying on
his back, the countenance upturned, a dark stream oozing from the
breast,--murdered by two ghastly wounds, murdered not long since, the
blood was still warm. Stunned and terror-stricken, I stood bending over
the body. Suddenly I was touched on the shoulder.

"Hollo! what is this?" said a gruff voice.

"Murder!" I answered in hollow accents, which sounded strangely to my
own ear.

"Murder! so it seems." And the policeman who had thus accosted me lifted
the body.

"A gentleman by his dress. How did this happen? How did you come here?"
and the policeman glanced suspiciously at me.

At this moment, however, there came up another policeman, in whom I
recognized the young man whose sister I had attended and cured.

"Dr. Fenwick," said the last, lifting his hat respe