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“Another will!” I glanced at the Major, who stared wildly about him, but could only mutter: “Jenkinson! William Jenkinson!”

“To-morrow, sir,” pursued the jeweller, his voice rising almost to a scream, “you may have forgotten the transient fears which drove you to this highly proper precaution. For you the sun will shine, the larks sing, your blood will course with its accustomed liveliness, and your breast expand to the health-giving breeze. I don’t blame you for it–oh, dear, no! not in the least. But you will admit it’s a totally different thing to repose beneath the churchyard sod on a mere point of honour, with an assassin’s bullet in your heart–not to mention that he threatened to tear it out and fling it to the crows!”

“The deuce!” shouted the Major, “your heart, did you say?”

“I did, sir.”

“You are quite sure! Your heart?–you are certain it was your heart? Not your liver? Think, man!”

“He did not so much as allude to that organ, sir, though I have no doubt he was capable of it.”

While we gazed upon one another, lost in a maze of extravagant surmise, a riotous rush of feet took the staircase by storm, and the door crashed open before two hilarious Irishmen, of whom the spokesman wore the reddest thatch of hair it has ever been my lot to cast eyes on. The other, so far as I can remember, confined his utterances to frequent, vociferous, and wholly inarticulate cries of the chase.

The Major presented them to us as Captain Tom O’Halloran and Mr. Finucane.

“And we’ve had the divvle’s own luck, Major, dear,” announced Tom O’Halloran. “The blayguard’s from home. Ah, now! don’t be dispirited, ’tis an early walk he’s after takin’; at laste, that’s what the slip of a gurrl towld us who answered the door; and mighty surprised she seemed to open it to a pair of customers at such an hour. For what d’ye suppose he calls himself when he’s at home? A jooler, sorr; a dirthy jooler.”

“A jeweller!” I cried aloud.

“No more, no less. Says I, there’s quare gentlefolks going in these times, but I don’t cool my heels waitin’ in a jooler’s shop with a challenge for the principal when he chooses to walk in to business. So I said to the gurrl: ‘You may tell your master,’ I said, ‘there’s two gentlemen have called, and will have his blood yet in a bottle,’ I said; ‘but any time will do between this and to-morrow.’ And with that I came away. But Mr. Finucane here suggested that, whilst we were at it, we might save time and engage the surgeon. So on our way back we rang up Dr. Frampton. No luck again; the doctor was out. Faix! early walkin’ seems the fashion at this health resort. But we’ve brought along his assistant, if that’s any use to you, and he’s downstairs at this moment on the door-mat.”

The captain put his head outside and whistled. Mr. Finucane assisted with a lifelike imitation of a coach-horn, and Mr. MacRea, thus summoned, appeared upon the threshold.

I cannot accurately describe what followed, for the jeweller, by casting himself into my arms, engaged a disproportionate share of my attention. I believe the Major caught up a loo table and held it before him as a shield.

“You see,” said Mr. MacRea, that afternoon, as I escorted him to the office of the Bath Coaching Company, to book his seat for that city, “on arriving at the Hotwells last evening, I naturally wished, Dr. Frampton, to assure myself that your position as a medical man answered to the glowing descriptions of it in your correspondence. I could think of no better method to arrive at this than by mingling with the gay throng in the Assembly Rooms; and I deemed that to take a hand at cards at the public tables would be the surest way to overhear the chit-chat of the fashionable world, and maybe elicit its opinion of you. But alas, sir! a man cannot play at the cards without exposing himself to the risk of losing. At the first table I lost–not heavily indeed, yet considerably. I rose and changed to another table; again I lost–this time the last sixpence in my pocket. Now, it is an idiosyncrasy of mine, maybe, but I cannot lose at the cards without losing also my temper; and the form it takes with me, Dr. Frampton, is too often an incontrollable impulse to pull the winner’s nose. I have argued with myself against this tendency a score of times, but it will not be denied. So, sir, last night, penniless and in a foreign land, I paced to and fro beneath the trees in front of the Assembly Rooms, and when this Mr. Jenkinson emerged, I accosted him and pulled his nose. To my astonishment he gave me a ticket and assured me that I should hear from him. Sir, we have no such practice at Largs, but it is my desire to conform with the customs of this country, especially in matters of etiquette. Consequently, after pulling the second gentleman’s nose, I handed him the first gentleman’s ticket, having none of my own and being ignorant (in the darkness) that it bore the first gentleman’s name. It was a mischance, sir, but so far as I can see one that might have happened to anybody. You say that even after apologising–for on reflection I am always willing to apologise for any conduct into which my infirmity of temper may have betrayed me–it is impossible for me to continue here as your assistant. I am glad, then, that prudence counselled me to provide two strings to my bow, and engage myself to Dr. Mathers of Bath, on the chance that you proved unsatisfactory; and I thank you for the month’s salary, which I could not perhaps claim under the circumstances as a right, but which I am happy to accept as a favour.”