The room was nearly full of terrified neighbours:
Sampson shouldered them all roughly
out of his way; and there, on a bed, lay
Maxley's gaunt figure in agony.

His body was drawn up by the middle into an
arch, and nothing touched the bed but the head
and the heels: the toes were turned back in
the most extraordinary contortion, and the
teeth set by the rigour of the convulsion; and
in the man's white face and fixed eyes were the
horror and anxiety, that so often show
themselves when the body feels itself in the gripe of
Death.

Mr. Osmond the surgeon was there: he had
applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of
the stomach, and was trying to get laudanum
down the throat; but the clenched teeth were
impassable.

He now looked up and said politely: "Ah!
Dr. Sampson, I am glad to see you here. The
seizure is of a cataleptic nature, I apprehend.
The treatment hitherto has been hot epithems
to the abdomen, and——"

Here Sampson, who had examined the patient
keenly and paid no more attention to Osmond
than to a fly buzzing, interrupted him as
unceremoniously:

"Poisoned," said he, philosophically.

"Poisoned!!" screamed the people.

"Poisoned!" cried Mr. Osmond, in whose
little list of stereotyped maladies poisoned had
no place. "Is there any one you have reason
to suspect?"

"I don't suspect, nor conject, sir: I know.
The man is poisoned; the substance strychnine;
now stand out of the way you gaping gabies,
and let me work: hy, young Oxford! you are a
man: get behind and hold both his arms, for
your life! That's you."

He whipped off his coat: laid hold of Osmond's
epithems, chucked them across the room,
saying, "You might just as well squirt rose-water
at a house on fire;" drenched his handkerchief
with chloroform, sprang upon the patient like a
mountain cat, and chloroformed him with all his
might.

Attacked so skilfully and resolutely, Maxley
resisted little for so strong a man; but the potent
poison within fought virulently: as a proof,
the chloroform had to be renewed three times
before it could produce any effect. At last the
patient yielded to the fumes, and became insensible.

Then the arched body subsided, and the rigid
muscles relaxed and turned supple. Sampson
kneaded the man like dough, by way of
comment.

"It is really very extraordinary," said
Osmond.

"Mai—dearr—sirr—nothing's extraornary;
t' a man that knows the reason of iverything."

He then inquired if any one in the room had
noticed at what intervals of time the pains came
on.

"I am sorry to say it is continuous," said
Osmond.

"Mai—dearr—sirr—nothing on airth is
continuous: iverything has paroxysms and remissions
from a toothache t' a cancer."

He repeated his query in various forms, till at
last a little girl squeaked out: " If—you—
please, sir, the throes do come about every ten
minutes, for I was a looking at the clock; I
carries father his dinner at twelve."

"If you please, ma'am, there's half a guinea
for you for not been such a n' ijjit as the rest of
the world, especially the Dockers." And he
jerked her half a sovereign.

A stupor fell on the assembly. They awoke
from it to examine the coin, and see if it was
real; or only yellow air.

Maxley came to, and gave a sigh of relief.
When he had been sensible, yet out of pain,
nearly eight minutes by the clock, Sampson
chloroformed him again. "I'll puzzle ye, my
friend strych," said he. "How will ye get your
perriodical paroxysm when the man is insensible?
The Dox say y' act direct on the spinal marrow.
Well, there's the spinal marrow where you found
it just now. Act on it again, my lad! I give
ye leave—if ye can. Ye can't; bekase ye
must pass through the Brain to get there: and
I occupy the Brain with a swifter ajint than y'
are, and mean to keep y' out of it till your power
to kill evaporates, been a vigitable."

With this his spirits mounted, and he
indulged in a harmless and favourite fiction: he
feigned the company were all males and medical
students, Osmond included, and he the lecturer:
"Now, jintlemen," said he, "obsairve the great
Therey of the Perriodeecity and Remittency of all
disease; in conjunckshin with its practice. All
diseases have paroxysms, and remissions, which
occur at intervals; sometimes it's a year,
sometimes a day, an hour, ten minutes: but
whatever th' interval, they are true to it: they keep
time. Only when the Disease is retirin, the
remissions become longer, the paroxysms return
at a greater interval: and just the revairse
when the pashint is to die. This, jintlemen, is
man's life from the womb to the grave: the
throes that precede his birth are remittent like
ivery thing else, but come at diminished intervals
when he has really made up his mind to
be born (his first mistake, jints, but not his
last); and the paroxysms of his mortal disease
come at shorter intervals when he is really goen
off the hooks: but still chronometrically; just as
watches keep time whether they go fast or slow.
Now, jintlemen, isn't this a beautiful Therey?"

"Oh mercy! Oh good people help me! Oh
Jesus Christ have pity on me!" And the
sufferer's body was bent like a bow, and his eyes
filled with horror, and his toes pointed at his
chin.

The Doctor hurled himself on the foe:
"Come," said he, "smell to this, lad! That's
right! He is better already, jintlemen, or he
couldn't howl, ye know. Deevil a howl in um
before I gave um puff chlorofm. Ah! would
ye? would ye?"

"Oh! oh! oh! oh! ugh!——ah!"

The Doctor got off the insensible body, and
resumed his lecture calmly, like one who has