ur aid, and your prompt aid. Three
days from this, and all aid will be too late!"

I had already gained the door of the room, when he called to me to come
back.

"You do not live in this but, but with your family yonder. Do not tell
them that I am here; let no one but yourself see me as I now am. Lock
the door of the but when you quit it. I should not close my eyes if I
were not secure from intruders."

"There is but one in my house, or in these parts, whom I would except
from the interdict you impose. You are aware of your own imminent
danger; the life, which you believe the discovery of a Dervish will
indefinitely prolong, seems to my eye of physician to hang on a thread.
I have already formed my own conjecture as to the nature of the disease
that enfeebles you. But I would fain compare that conjecture with the
weightier opinion of one whose experience and skill are superior to
mine. Permit me, then, when I return to you to-morrow, to bring with
me the great physician to whom I refer. His name will not, perhaps, be
unknown to you: I speak of Julius Faber."

"A physician of the schools! I can guess well enough how learnedly he
would prate, and how little he could do. But I will not object to his
visit, if it satisfies you that, since I should die under the hands of
the doctors, I may be permitted to indulge my own whim in placing my
hopes in a Dervish. Yet stay. You have, doubtless, spoken of me to this
Julius Faber, your fellow-physician and friend? Promise me, if you bring
him here, that you will not name me,--that you will not repeat to him
the tale I have told you, or the hope which has led me to these shores.
What I have told you, no matter whether, at this moment, you consider me
the dupe of a chimera, is still under the seal of the confidence which a
patient reposes in the physician he himself selects for his confidant. I
select you, and not Julius Faber!"

"Be it as you will," said I, after a moment's reflection. "The moment
you make yourself my patient, I am bound to consider what is best for
you. And you may more respect, and profit by, an opinion based upon your
purely physical condition than by one in which you might suppose the
advice was directed rather to the disease of the mind than to that of
the body."

"How amazed and indignant your brother-physician will be if he ever see
me a second time! How learnedly he will prove that, according to all
correct principles of science and nature, I ought to