“Ay, but is there anything wrong about your head?”

“Heaven knows.  About a twelvemonth ago I felt as if there were two sprouts budding out of my forehead, but on putting up my hand I could feel nothing.  It was as smooth as ever.  It must have been hypochondriasis.  The curate, though, is a handsome dog, and, like yourself, it was my wife sent me here.”

“Is your wife a cripple?”

“Faith, anything but that.”

“How is her tongue?  No paralysis in that quarter?”

“On the contrary, she is calm and soft-spoken, and perfectly sweet and angelic in her manner.”

“But was it in consequence of the famine she sent you here?  Toast and water!—­toast and water!  O Lord!”

This dialogue took place in Manifold’s lodgings, where Topertoe, aided by a crutch and his servant, was in the habit of visiting him.  To Manifold, indeed, this was a penal settlement, in consequence of the reasons which we have already stated.

The Pythagorean, as well as Topertoe, was also occasionally forced to the use of crutches; and it was certainly a strange and remarkable thing to witness two men, each at the extreme point of social indulgence, and each departing from reason and common-sense, suffering from the consequences of their respective errors; Manifold, a most voracious fellow, knocked on the head by an attack of apoplexy, and Cooke, the philosopher, suffering the tortures of the damned from a most violent rheumatism, produced by a monomania which compelled him to decline the simple enjoyment of reasonable food and dress.  Cooke’s monomania, however, was a rare one.  In Blackwood’s Magazine there appeared, several years ago, an admirable writer, whose name we now forget, under the title of a modern Pythagorean; but that was merely a nom de guerre, adopted, probably, to excite a stronger interest in the perusal of his productions.  Here, however, was a man in whom the principle existed upon what he considered rational and philosophic grounds.  He had gotten the philosophical blockhead’s crotchet into his head, and carried the principle, in a practical point of view, much further than ever the old fool himself did in his life.

CHAPTER XXI.  The Dinner at Ballyspellan

—­The Appearance Woodward.—­Valentine Greatrakes.

The Thursday appointed for the dinner at length arrived.  The little village was all alive with stir and bustle, inasmuch as for several months no such important event had taken place.  It was, in fact, a gala day; and the poorer inhabitants crowded about the inn to watch the guests arriving, and the paupers to solicit their alms.  Twelve or one was then the usual hour for dinner, but in consequence of the large scale on which it was to take place and the unusual preparations necessary, it was not until the hour of two that the guests sat down to table.  Some of the principal names we have already mentioned—­all the