“A farrier! you saucy groom—­and by whose authority, pray?” said the curate, rising in surprise and indignation; “or who will be warrant for this new physician?”

“For authority, an it like your reverence, he had mine; and for warrant, I trust I have not been five-and-twenty years in this house without having right to warrant the giving of a draught to beast or body—­I who can gie a drench, and a ball, and bleed, or blister, if need, to my very self.”

The counsellors of the house of Robsart thought it meet to carry this information instantly to Tressilian, who as speedily summoned before him Wayland Smith, and demanded of him (in private, however) by what authority he had ventured to administer any medicine to Sir Hugh Robsart?

“Why,” replied the artist, “your worship cannot but remember that I told you I had made more progress into my master’s—­I mean the learned Doctor Doboobie’s—­mystery than he was willing to own; and indeed half of his quarrel and malice against me was that, besides that I got something too deep into his secrets, several discerning persons, and particularly a buxom young widow of Abingdon, preferred my prescriptions to his.”

“None of thy buffoonery, sir,” said Tressilian sternly.  “If thou hast trifled with us—­much more, if thou hast done aught that may prejudice Sir Hugh Robsart’s health, thou shalt find thy grave at the bottom of a tin-mine.”

“I know too little of the great arcanum to convert the ore to gold,” said Wayland firmly.  “But truce to your apprehensions, Master Tressilian.  I understood the good knight’s case from what Master William Badger told me; and I hope I am able enough to administer a poor dose of mandragora, which, with the sleep that must needs follow, is all that Sir Hugh Robsart requires to settle his distraught brains.”

“I trust thou dealest fairly with me, Wayland?” said Tressilian.

“Most fairly and honestly, as the event shall show,” replied the artist.  “What would it avail me to harm the poor old man for whom you are interested?—­you, to whom I owe it that Gaffer Pinniewinks is not even now rending my flesh and sinews with his accursed pincers, and probing every mole in my body with his sharpened awl (a murrain on the hands which forged it!) in order to find out the witch’s mark?—­I trust to yoke myself as a humble follower to your worship’s train, and I only wish to have my faith judged of by the result of the good knight’s slumbers.”

Wayland Smith was right in his prognostication.  The sedative draught which his skill had prepared, and Will Badger’s confidence had administered, was attended with the most beneficial effects.  The patient’s sleep was long and healthful, and the poor old knight awoke, humbled indeed in thought and weak in frame, yet a much better judge of whatever was subjected to his intellect than he had been for some time past.  He resisted for a while the proposal made by his friends that Tressilian should undertake