“Trust me,” I repeated.  “If you don’t believe I would hold my tongue about what I have seen here, for your sake, you may be certain that I would for—­”

“For my daughter’s,” he interposed, with a sarcastic smile.

I bowed with all imaginable cordiality.  The doctor waved his pistol in the air contemptuously.

“There are two ways of making you hold your tongue,” he said.  “The first is shooting you; the second is making a felon of you.  On consideration, after what you have said, the risk in either case seems about equal.  I am naturally a humane man; your family have done me no injury; I will not be the cause of their losing money; I won’t take your life, I’ll have your character.  We are all felons on this floor of the house.  You have come among us—­you shall be one of us.  Ring that bell.”

He pointed with the pistol to a bell-handle behind me.  I pulled it in silence.

Felon!  The word has an ugly sound—­a very ugly sound.  But, considering how near the black curtain had been to falling over the adventurous drama of my life, had I any right to complain of the prolongation of the scene, however darkly it might look at first?  Besides, some of the best feelings of our common nature (putting out of all question the value which men so unaccountably persist in setting on their own lives), impelled me, of necessity, to choose the alternative of felonious existence in preference to that of respectable death.  Love and Honor bade me live to marry Alicia; and a sense of family duty made me shrink from occasioning a loss of three thousand pounds to my affectionate sister.  Perish the far-fetched scruples which would break the heart of one lovely woman, and scatter to the winds the pin-money of another!

“If you utter one word in contradiction of anything I say when my workmen come into the room,” said the doctor, uncocking his pistol as soon as I had rung the bell, “I shall change my mind about leaving your life and taking your character.  Remember that; and keep a guard on your tongue.”

The door opened, and four men entered.  One was an old man whom I had not seen before; in the other three I recognized the workman-like footman, and the two sinister artisans whom I had met at the house-gate.  They all started, guiltily enough, at seeing me.

“Let me introduce you,” said the doctor, taking me by the arm.  “Old File and Young File, Mill and Screw—­Mr. Frank Softly.  We have nicknames in this workshop, Mr. Softly, derived humorously from our professional tools and machinery.  When you have been here long enough, you will get a nickname, too.  Gentlemen,” he continued, turning to the workmen, “this is a new recruit, with a knowledge of chemistry which will be useful to us.  He is perfectly well aware that the nature of our vocation makes us suspicious of all newcomers, and he, therefore, desires to give you practical proof that he is to be depended on, by making half-a-crown