VERY HARD CASH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND."

CHAPTER XXIV.

IN the terror and confusion no questions were
then asked: Alfred got to David's head and told
Skinner to take his feet; Mrs. Dodd helped, and
they carried him up and laid him on her bed.
The servant girls cried, and wailed, and were of
little use; Mrs. Dodd hurried them off for
medical aid, and she and Julia, though pale as
ghosts, and trembling in every limb, were
tearless, and almost silent, and did all for the best:
they undid a shirt button, that confined his
throat: they set his head high, and tried their
poor little eau–de–Cologne and feminine remedies:
and each of them held an insensible hand in both
hers, clasping it piteously, and trying to hold him
tight, so that Death should not take him away
from them.

"My son, where is my son?" sighed Mrs.
Dodd.

Alfred threw his arm round her neck: " You
have one son here: what shall I do?"

The next minute he was running to the telegraph
office for her.

At the gate he found Skinner hanging about,
and asked him hurriedly how the calamity had
happened. Skinner said Captain Dodd had
fallen down senseless in the street, and he had
passed soon after, recognised him, and brought
him home; " I have paid the men, sir; I wouldn't
let them ask the ladies at such a time."

"Oh, thank you! thank you, Skinner! I will
repay you: it is me you have obliged." And
Alfred ran off with the words in his mouth.

Skinner looked after him, and muttered: "I
forgot him. It is a nice mess. Wish I was out
of it." And he went back, hanging his head, to
Alfred's father.

Mr. Osmond met him; Skinner turned and
saw him enter the villa.

Mr. Osmond came softly into the room, examined
Dodd's eye, felt his pulse, and said he
must be bled at once.

Mrs. Dodd was averse to this: "Oh, let us
try everything else first," said she; but Osmond
told her there was no other remedy: "All the
functions we rely on in the exhibition of medicines
are suspended.

Dr. Short now drove up, and was ushered in.

Mrs. Dodd asked him imploringly whether it
was necessary to bleed. But Dr. Short knew his
business too well to be entrapped into an independent
opinion where a surgeon had been before
him; he drew Mr. Osmond apart and inquired
what he had recommended: this ascertained, he
turned to Mrs. Dodd, and said, " I advise venesection,
or cupping."

"Oh, Dr. Short, pray have pity and order
something less terrible. Dr. Sampson is so averse
to bleeding."

"Sampson? Sampson? never heard of him."

"It is the chronothermal man," said Osmond.

"Oh, ah! But this is too serious a case to be
quacked. Coma, with stertor, and a full, bounding
pulse, indicates liberal blood letting. I
would try venesection; then cup, if necessary,
or leech the temporal artery: I need not say,
sir, calomel must complete the cure. The case
is simple; and, at present, surgical; I leave it
in competent hands." And he retired, leaving
the inferior practitioner well pleased with him
and with himself; no insignificant part of a physician's
art.

When he was gone, Mr. Osmond told Mrs.
Dodd that however crotchety Dr. Sampson
might be, he was an able man, and had very
properly resisted the indiscriminate use of the
lancet: the profession owed him much. "But
in apoplexy the leech and the lancet are still our
sheet anchors."

Mrs. Dodd uttered a faint shriek: "Apoplexy!
Oh, David! Oh, my darling; have you come
home for this?"

Osmond assured her apoplexy was not necessarily
fatal: provided the cerebral blood vessels
were relieved in time by depletion.

The fixed eye, and terrible stertorous breathing
on the one hand, and the promise of relief
on the other, overpowered Mrs. Dodd's reluctance.
She sent Julia out of the room on a pretext;
and then consented with tears to David's
being bled. But she would not yield to leave
the room; no; this tender woman nerved herself
to see her husband's blood flow, sooner than
risk his being bled too much by the hard hand of
custom. Let the peevish fools, who make their
own troubles in love, compare their slight and