After tea, there came in a stout army surgeon, a Highlander by birth, educated in Edinburgh, with whom I had pleasant, not unstimulating talk.  He had been brought very close to that immane and nefandous Burke-and-Hare business which made the blood of civilization run cold in the year 1828, and told me, in a very calm way, with an occasional pinch from the mull, to refresh his memory, some of the details of those frightful murders, never rivalled in horror until the wretch Dumollard, who kept a private cemetery for his victims, was dragged into the light of day.  He had a good deal to say, too, about the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, and the famous preparations, mercurial and the rest, which I remember well having seen there,—­the “sudabit multum.” and others,—­also of our New York Professor Carnochan’s handiwork, a specimen of which I once admired at the New York College.  But the doctor was not in a happy frame of mind, and seemed willing to forget the present in the past:  things went wrong, somehow, and the time was out of joint with him.

Dr. Thompson, kind, cheerful, companionable, offered me half his own wide bed, in the house of Dr. Baer, for my second night in Middletown.  Here I lay awake again another night.  Close to the house stood an ambulance in which was a wounded Rebel officer, attended by one of their own surgeons.  He was calling out in a loud voice, all night long, as it seemed to me, “Doctor!  Doctor!  Driver!  Water!” in loud, complaining tones, I have no doubt of real suffering, but in strange contrast with the silent patience which was the almost universal rule.

The courteous Dr. Thompson will let me tell here an odd coincidence, trivial, but having its interest as one of a series.  The Doctor and myself lay in the bed, and a lieutenant, a friend of his, slept on the sofa, At night, I placed my match-box, a Scotch one, of the Macpherson-plaid pattern, which I bought years ago, on the bureau, just where I could put my hand upon it.  I was the last of the three to rise in the morning, and on looking for my pretty match-box, I found it was gone.  This was rather awkward,—­not on account of the loss, but of the unavoidable fact that one of my fellow-lodgers must have taken it.  I must try to find out what it meant.

“By the way, Doctor, have you seen anything of a little plaid-pattern match-box?”

The Doctor put his hand to his pocket, and, to his own huge surprise and my great gratification, pulled out two match-boxes exactly alike, both printed with the Macpherson plaid.  One was his, the other mine, which he had seen lying round, and naturally took for his own, thrusting it into his pocket, where it found its twin-brother from the same workshop.  In memory of which event, we exchanged boxes, like two Homeric heroes.