“In respect to this hocus-pocus of yours, sir, with the laudanum and Mr. Franklin Blake,” he began.  “While the workpeople are in the house, my duty as a servant gets the better of my feelings as a man.  When the workpeople are gone, my feelings as a man get the better of my duty as a servant.  Very good.  Last night, Mr. Jennings, it was borne in powerfully on my mind that this new medical enterprise of yours would end badly.  If I had yielded to that secret Dictate, I should have put all the furniture away again with my own hand, and have warned the workmen off the premises when they came the next morning.”

“I am glad to find, from what I have seen up-stairs,” I said, “that you resisted the secret Dictate.”

“Resisted isn’t the word,” answered Betteredge.  “Wrostled is the word.  I wrostled, sir, between the silent orders in my bosom pulling me one way, and the written orders in my pocket-book pushing me the other, until (saving your presence) I was in a cold sweat.  In that dreadful perturbation of mind and laxity of body, to what remedy did I apply?  To the remedy, sir, which has never failed me yet for the last thirty years and more—­to This Book!”

He hit the book a sounding blow with his open hand, and struck out of it a stronger smell of stale tobacco than ever.

“What did I find here,” pursued Betteredge, “at the first page I opened?  This awful bit, sir, page one hundred and seventy-eight, as follows.—­’Upon these, and many like Reflections, I afterwards made it a certain rule with me, That whenever I found those secret Hints or Pressings of my Mind, to doing, or not doing any Thing that presented; or to going this Way, or that Way, I never failed to obey the secret Dictate.’  As I live by bread, Mr. Jennings, those were the first words that met my eye, exactly at the time when I myself was setting the secret Dictate at defiance!  You don’t see anything at all out of the common in that, do you, sir?”

“I see a coincidence—­nothing more.”

“You don’t feel at all shaken, Mr. Jennings, in respect to this medical enterprise of yours?

“Not the least in the world.”

Betteredge stared hard at me, in dead silence.  He closed the book with great deliberation; he locked it up again in the cupboard with extraordinary care; he wheeled round, and stared hard at me once more.  Then he spoke.

“Sir,” he said gravely, “there are great allowances to be made for a man who has not read Robinson Crusoe since he was a child.  I wish you good morning.”

He opened his door with a low bow, and left me at liberty to find my own way into the garden.  I met Mr. Blake returning to the house.

“You needn’t tell me what has happened,” he said.  “Betteredge has played his last card:  he has made another prophetic discovery in Robinson Crusoe.  Have you humoured his favourite delusion?  No?  You have let him see that you don’t believe in Robinson Crusoe?  Mr. Jennings! you have fallen to the lowest possible place in Betteredge’s estimation.  Say what you like, and do what you like, for the future.  You will find that he won’t waste another word on you now.”