comes; and Dr.
Hicok, memorandum in hand, sat in his comfortable library about three
o'clock on one beautiful warm summer afternoon, as pale as a sheet,
his heart thumping away like Mr. Krupp's biggest steam-hammer at
Essen, his mouth and tongue parched and feverish, a pitcher of cold
water at hand from which he sipped and sipped, though it seemed as if
his throat repelled it into "the globular state," or dispersed it into
steam, as red-hot iron does. Around him were the records of the vast
army of doubters and quibblers in whose works he had been hunting, as
a traveller labours through a jungle, for the deepest doubts, the most
remote inquiries.

Sometimes, with that sort of hardihood, rather than reason, which
makes a desperate man try to believe by his will what he longs to know
to be true, Dr. Hicok would say to himself, "I know I've got him!" And
then his heart would seem to fall out of him, it sank so suddenly, and
with so deadly a faintness, as the other side of his awful case loomed
before him, and he thought, "But if--?" He would not finish _that_
question; he could not. The furthest point to which he could bring
himself was that of a sort of icy outer stiffening of acquiescence in
the inevitable.

There was a ring at the street-door. The servant brought in a card, on
a silver salver.

+-----------------+
| MR. APOLLO LYON |
+-----------------+

"Show the gentleman in," said the doctor. He spoke with difficulty;
for the effort to control his own nervous excitement was so immense an
exertion, that he hardly had the self-command and muscular energy even
to articulate.

The servant returned, and ushered into the library a handsome,
youngish, middle-aged and middle-sized gentleman, pale, with large
melancholy black eyes, and dressed in the most perfect and quiet
style.

The doctor arose, and greeted his visitor with a degree of steadiness
and politeness that did him the greatest credit.

"How do you do, sir?" he said: "I am happy"--but it struck him that he
wasn't, and he stopped short.

"Very right, my dear sir," replied the guest, in a voice that was
musical but perceptibly sad, or rather patient in tone. "Very right;
how hollow those formulas are! I hate all forms and ceremonies! But I
am glad to see _you_, doctor. Now, that is really the fact."

No doubt! "Divil doubt him!" as an Irishman would say. So is a cat
glad to see a mouse in its paw. Something like these thoughts arose in
the docto