Doctor Danvers assured him that no apologies were needed, and was only restrained from adding the expression of that pity which he really felt, by the fear of irritating a temper so full of bitterness, pride and defiance.  A few minutes more, and the coach having reached its destination, they bid one another farewell, and parted.

At that time there resided in a decent mansion about a mile from the town of Chester, a dapper little gentleman, whom we shall call Doctor Parkes.  This gentleman was the proprietor and sole professional manager of a private asylum for the insane and enjoyed a high reputation, and a proportionate amount of business, in his melancholy calling.  It was about the second day after the conversation we have just sketched, that this little gentleman, having visited, according to his custom, all his domestic patients, was about to take his accustomed walk in his somewhat restricted pleasure grounds, when his servant announced a visitor.

“A gentleman,” he repeated; “you have seen him before—­eh?”

“No, sir,” replied the man; “he is in the study, sir.”

“Ha! a professional call.  Well, we shall see.”

So saying, the little gentleman summoned his gravest look, and hastened to the chamber of audience.

On entering he found a man dressed well, but gravely, having in his air and manner something of high breeding.  In countenance striking, dark-featured, and stern, furrowed with the lines of pain or thought, rather than of age, although his dark hairs were largely mingled with white.

The physician bowed, and requested the stranger to take a chair; he, however, nodded slightly and impatiently, as if to intimate an intolerance of ceremony, and, advancing a step or two, said abruptly—­

“My name, sir, is Marston; I have come to give you a patient.”

The doctor bowed with a still deeper inclination, and paused for a continuance of the communication thus auspiciously commenced.

“You are Dr. Parkes, I take it for granted,” said Marston, in the same tone.

“Your most obedient, humble servant, sir,” replied he, with the polite formality of the day, and another grave bow.

“Doctor,” demanded Marston, fixing his eye upon him sternly, and significantly tapping his own forehead, “can you stay execution?”

The physician looked puzzled, hesitated, and at last requested his visitor to be more explicit.

“Can you,” said Marston, with the same slow and stern articulation, and after a considerable pause—­“can you prevent the malady you profess to cure?—­can you meet and defeat the enemy halfway?—­can you scare away the spirit of madness before it takes actual possession, and while it is still only hovering about its threatened victim?”

“Sir,” he replied, “in certain cases—­in very many, indeed—­the enemy, as you well call it, may thus be met, and effectually worsted at a distance.  Timely interposition, in ninety cases out of a hundred, is everything; and, I assure you, I hear your question with much pleasure, inasmuch as I assume it to have reference to the case of the patient about whom you desire to consult me; and who is, therefore, I hope, as yet merely menaced with the misfortune from which you would save him.”