‘I p-pity you, Sir,’ and ‘pity’ shot like a pellet from his lips.  ’Why the deuce will you dabble in medicine, Sir?  Do you think it’s a thing to be learnt in an afternoon out of the bottom of an old cookery-book?’

‘Cookery-book! excuse me, Dr. Sturk,’ replied Puddock offended.  ’I’m given to underthtand, Sir, it’s to be found in Culpepper.’

‘Culpepper!’ said Sturk, viciously.  ’Cull-poison—­you have peppered him to a purpose, I promise you!  How much of it, pray, Sir (to O’Flaherty,) have you got in your stomach?’

‘Tell him, Puddock,’ said O’Flaherty, helplessly.

‘Only a trifle I assure you,’ extenuated Puddock (I need not spell his lisp), ’in a little muslin bag, about the size of the top joint of a lady’s little finger.’

‘Top joint o’ the devil!’ roared O’Flaherty, bitterly, rousing himself; ’I tell you, Dr. Sturk, it was as big as my thumb, and a miracle it did not choke me.’

‘It may do that job for you yet, Sir,’ sneered the doctor with a stern disgust.  ‘I dare say you feel pretty hot here?’ jerking his finger into his stomach.

’And—­and—­and—­what is it?—­is it—­do you think it’s anything —­anyways—­dangerous?’ faltered poor O’Flaherty.

‘Dangerous!’ responded Sturk, with an angry chuckle—­indeed, he was specially vindictive against lay intruders upon the mystery of his craft; ’why, yes—­ha,—­ha!—­just maybe a little.  It’s only poison, Sir, deadly, barefaced poison!’ he began sardonically, with a grin, and ended with a black glare and a knock on the table, like an auctioneer’s ‘gone!’

‘There are no less than two—­three—­five mortal poisons in it,’ said the doctor with emphatic acerbity.  ’You and Mr. Puddock will allow that’s rather strong.’

O’Flaherty sat down and looked at Sturk, and wiping his damp face and forehead, he got up without appearing to know where he was going.  Puddock stood with his hands in his breeches pockets, staring with his little round eyes on the doctor, I must confess, with a very foolish and rather guilty vacuity all over his plump face, rigid and speechless, for three or four seconds; then he put his hand, which did actually tremble, upon the doctor’s arm, and he said, very thickly—­

’I feel, Sir, you’re right; it is my fault, Sir, I’ve poisoned him —­merthiful goodneth!—­I—­I—­’

Puddock’s address acted for a moment on O’Flaherty.  He came up to him pale and queer, like a somnambulist, and shook his fingers very cordially with a very cold grasp.

’If it was the last word I ever spoke, Puddock, you’re a good-natured—­he’s a gentleman, Sir—­and it was all my own fault; he warned me, he did, again’ swallyin’ a dhrop of it—­remember what I’m saying, doctor—­’twas I that done it; I was always a botch, Puddock, an’ a fool; and—­and—­gentlemen—­good-bye.’

And the flowered dressing-gown and ungartered stockings disappeared through the door into the bed-room, from whence they heard a great souse on the bed, and the bedstead gave a dismal groan.