Love versus Appendicitis

By Henry C. Rowland

ISS AGNES MARCH turned from her scrutiny of the glowing embers, and regarded her fiancé in pained surprise.

“Your answer is hardly such as one might expect, Worthington, from a man who has been so recently imploring the fates to grant him the opportunity of proving his devotion to the lady of his choice; something sanguinary and with a large element of physical danger preferred.”

Mr. Worthington Jones squirmed uneasily, and hitched his chair a little closer to the fire. He wisely avoided allowing his eyes to rest upon the fair face of his companion as it was turned to him, rosy-hued from the reflection of the flames. Some inner consciousness seemed to warn him that to do so would be to haul down his flag in defeat. He had learned from a painfully sweet experience the witchery of the flame kindled by a glowing fire in long eyes of a certain violet hue, and, in a crisis like the present, he felt that he could afford to take no chances.

“But the proposition seems so beastly cold-blooded, Agnes,” he complained. “I'd fight for you until I was hacked into small cutlets and all that, but getting my appendix cut out is quite a different matter. You see, I nave no chance to cut back.”

His fiancée looked upon him as coldly as was permitted through the high color of her fresh young face. Her determined little chin was set in a manner which boded ill to opposition. Mr. Jones, throwing her a furtive look, shivered slightly, and spread his athletic palms before the blaze.

Miss March spoke slowly and with an emphasis which discouraged interruption.

“The situation is this, Worthington. We are engaged to be married in four months, and expect to take a trip around the world on our—er—honey—that is—wedding journey.” Her heightened color was disguised in a sudden upward flare of the fire. “Now, you have had three quite severe attacks of appendicitis, and are just recovering from a fourth. Everybody says that the only thing to do is to have the nasty little thing cut out between attacks”

Mr. Jones interrupted her, somewhat savagely.

“It’s mighty easy to advise some one else to get sliced. I'd do it myself”

“Please don’t interrupt. Suppose we were to get ’way off in Baluchistan or Manchuria or”

“Hoboken,” suggested Mr. Jones, moodily.

“Yes—just as the steamer was about to sail”

“But I don’t believe that I ever had real appendicitis, Agnes. I don’t much believe in all that yarn about one’s appendix, anyway. It’s got to be a sort of fad to wear your appendix trimmed close, just like your beard. I’ll make the best of mine the way it was built.”

“You are talking like a child, Worthington. Every progressive surgeon admits that it is an absolutely worthless structure”

“That’s rank ingratitude for you! They're worth about a thousand dollars apiece to those chaps. I'd be willing to make a cut two inches long myself to haul a thousand-dollar bill out of some fellow I had no other interest in!”

Miss March tossed her golden head, angrily. “I had never thought to find you so timid, Worthington, for that is all that it amounts to. You really need have no anxiety, as the operation with modern methods and between attacks is absolutely safe. All of the surgeons say so.”

“Oh, I'll admit that it’s safe enough for the surgeons, and even for the friends and relatives,” replied Mr. Jones, sardonically.

“I was talking this morning with Dr. Cutler,” pursued the girl, ignoring his ill-timed levity. “He is that nice young surgeon who has settled here, you know.”

“Yes, I have heard of him,” replied Mr. Jones, darkly. “Seems to have settled here on the piazza, from all that I can learn. No doubt he’d like the job, but he won’t get it unless he lies in ambush with an ax.”

“He tells me,” continued the girl, steadily, albeit with an apparent effort, “that he has operated one hundred cases without having a single casualty.”

“You shouldn’t believe all he tells you, Agnes. There are times when a doctor stretches the truth for the sake of his patient.”

“He tells me that he is going to operate to-morrow morning on a young man who has recently become insane”

“That’s probably the reason,” suggested Mr. Jones.

“—become insane from automobiling. He has lately developed appendicitis, and now he fancies that he is an automobile with his boiler burned out. Dr. Cutler thinks that this idea has been suggested by pain in the region of the appendix. He is a wonderful diagnostician.”

“I should say that he was wasted in the surgical profession,” observed Mr. Jones. “He ought to give it up and write novels. I should think that his talents would go to seed in a place the size of this.”

“He does a good deal of operating at Dr. Markham’s private retreat for the insane over on the Pine Ridge road. He’s to operate there to-morrow on this poor fellow I was telling you about. Dr. Cutler says that there is always work to be found if a man is on the lookout for it.”

“He ought to find it,” admitted Mr. Jones. “Does he own an automobile?”

Miss March, arising slowly and with great dignity, walked to the corner of the high mantel, which she clasped in both hands, and, resting one rosy cheek against the oaken carving, looked sadly down upon her drooping fiancé.

“Since you decline to take this single request of mine seriously, Worthington, it seems to be a waste of time to discuss it.”

“That’s so,” he assented, with assumed heartiness; “let’s change the subject.” He glanced at the great hall clock with an exclamation of dismay which was echoed by the girl, whose eyes had followed his.

“Why, it’s almost time to start!” he cried.

“Must you go back to town? Can't you stop the night?” She stepped quickly into an alcove, and pressed her face against the curved window-pane. “It is a dreadful night, raining and blowing and black as ink.”

“I really must get back to town to-night,” he replied, regretfully; “I have several things to attend to before I go to the office.”

“And you will consider being operated upon, won’t you, dear?” asked Miss March, pleadingly.

“I shall do what seems best to me, Agnes,” he replied, with a hint of impatience in his tone.

“I will tell you this much,” replied the girl, quickly and bravely, attempting to wink back the tears which had gushed into her eyes at the shortness of his tone, “unless you are operated upon, Worthington, you shall never get me out of the United States. In fact,” she went on, pique overcoming her emotion, “if your devotion for me can’t go to the extent of lifting this dreadful load from my mind, I’m not sure that I care to marry you at all.”

Before Mr. Jones could fittingly reply, there was heard without the crunching of gravel, followed immediately by three great, agonizing bleats.

“There is the automobile!” cried Agnes. “Papa ordered that because it is so dark that you will need the acetylene search-light.” She touched a bell in the wainscoting, and a servant appeared with the luggage of the departing guest, which he proceeded to pile up in the tonneau.

“Here is a great rain-coat of papa’s; you can slip it on over all of your things!” exclaimed the girl, holding up the voluminous garment as she spoke.

Five minutes later, the ponderous machine, containing the chastened Mr. Jones, rolled blatantly out through the massive gateway, and started on its six-mile course to the railroad station. Although the road was of the type usually to be found in the Berkshire Hills—that is to say, narrow and tortuous, with sudden unexpected grades and, in places, running between the mountain on one side and the chasm on the other, yet such was the power of the gleaming search-light that they were able to proceed at almost the usual rate of speed and with such allowance of safety as is vouchsafed in the order of things to devil-wagons of this character.

As they swept strongly onward, now dipping with the swoop of an owl into shadowy glades where the witch-mist struck damp and chill upon their faces, thence breasting powerfully the opposite grade, and, without pause for breath, plunging on into the redolent, rain-sweet woods, Mr. Jones began to feel the glamour of this dream-like ride. He had, in fact, already lifted up his voice in rhapsody, when from the vitals of the leviathan beneath him there arose a sudden outburst of wild, complaining cries. An instant later, with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh, the automobile had subsided into an inert, pulseless mass of cooling metal.

The chauffeur, a wiry man of French extraction, leaped from his perch and dived into the machine, somewhat as a weasel slips into a pile of stones. Mr. Jones, snugly ensconced in the tonneau, awaited the verdict with dismal foreboding.

“Well, Gaston?” he inquired, anxiously, as the Frenchman reappeared.

“Ah, monsieur, it is no use. She is dead!”

“How long will it take to bring her to life?”

“One hour—two hour—it is imposseeble to say. But monsieur is but a mile from ze gare. We have come so quick zat, if monsieur is willing to walk from here, he has plenty of time. I send ze luggage in ze morning.”

Mr. Jones glanced at his watch, and saw that he had yet over half an hour in which to reach the station, so, with a word of condolence to the unhappy Gaston, he wrapped the rain-coat about him, and plunged into the murk of the night.

Before he had gone a quarter of a mile, he discovered, to his dismay, that the road forked; but, a brief consideration assuring him that the station was in the valley, he chose the road which appeared to descend, and followed it with a confidence that waned gradually as he proceeded. For what seemed to him to be an interminable distance the road continued its sloping descent, and, to make matters worse, it soon entered a belt of timber where the darkness was so absolute that Mr. Jones had difficulty in keeping in the open, and twice wandered into a roadside rill. The second time he fell his length in the icy water, and arose chilled in body but heated in spirit.

Appreciating the absurdity of further effort, Mr. Jones decided to return to the automobile. Retracing his steps, he, in due time, reached the fork in the roads. But, as he did so, a subtle sound clove the dripping chill of the night air and was borne in upon his senses to be interpreted as a soul-sickening calamity. From far up the valley there was carried to his ears the faint “chug-a-chug” of the departing demon, with an occasional “blat-blat” as it lifted its raucous voice in sardonic farewell.

Mr. Jones sank to the wet grass on the roadside, dropped his head upon his chest and thrust his numbed hands into the side-pockets of the capacious rain-coat, and, in so doing, made an important discovery. His right hand closed as if by instinct upon a large, smooth body, which, as he drew it forth, emitted a jovial, gurgling chuckle. He saw that what he held in his hand was a pint flask, all but filled. Evidently his prospective father-in-law was, where automobiles were concerned, a man of ripened wisdom and experience.

Mr. Jones was careful to throw no slight upon this gracious donation of the gods. Imbued with fresh courage, he rose to his feet and took counsel as to his next move. Believing that the other road must be the one leading to the railroad station, he started forward valiantly, having determined that his wisest course would be to reach the station and spend the night in a modest near-by hostelry. Much to his surprise, however, before he had gone a mile, the road which had gradually ascended led him out upon a wind-swept plain that seemed to stretch away into infinity, dark, cold and forbidding.

At this discouraging development, Mr. Jones decided that it would be well to refresh himself further, in the hope that, by stimulating his mental machinery, some light might be thrown upon the mystery before him. In this he was successful, for, as he replaced the flask, it suddenly occurred to him that the road which he was on led to Indian Lake, where there were a small hotel and a colony of Summer cottages.

“That’s it,” he thought to himself. “That fool chauffeur must have run tight past the road to the station. As I remember it, the hotel is only about a mile beyond that fork in the roads, and the best thing that I can do is to push right along until I strike it.”

Greatly encouraged, Mr. Jones proceeded on his sodden way, covered with mud, soaked to the skin, yet fairly comfortable withal. Soon his road led him through a grove of pine-trees, on emerging from which, he saw in the distance what, from their number and extent, could be no other than the lights of the hotel.

When at last he came to the house, he entered the front door, which was unlatched, and walked to the desk. Finding no one there, he was about to proceed on a tour of investigation when he heard a heavy step on the stair outside, and the next moment the doorway was blocked by a man of gigantic stature with a jovial Hibernian face. He was clad in a somewhat tattered uniform of faded blue, and Mr. Jones was correct in supposing that he must be the night-watchman.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Jones, briskly, striving to compensate in tone for that which he feared he might lack in appearance. “Are you the night-watchman?”

“I am, sorr,” replied the giant, with a merry twinkle in his blue eye.

“I suppose the night-clerk has gone to bed. My automobile has broken down, so I left it back on the road and came here to get a room for the night,” pursued Mr. Jones.

“You are welcome as flowers in May, sorr. Sure, I’ve been lookin’ for you the last hour and more.”

“Looking for me?” exclaimed Mr. Jones, in surprise. “Oh, I see,” he went on, with a sudden inspiration. “The chauffeur discovered his mistake, and they telephoned here to say that I had broken down and would probably run in here to get housed for the night.”

“Ye’ve hit the nail on the head, sorr,” replied the Irishman, with an expansive smile. “Sure, yer room’s ready and waitin’ for ye, wid the bed turned back and a fire on the heart’.”

“I am rather shy about going near a fire with all this gasolene about me,” observed Mr. Jones, jocosely.

“Then ye’d best hop into bed an’ leave me take yer trimmin’s down to dry, sorr. Sorra a one of ’em ’ud burn wid the wather in ’em,” he went on, noticing Mr. Jones’s bedraggled condition. “Ye’d best get into bed an’ leave me give ye a good rub wid alcyhol. Will ye come up now, sorr?”

With a thankful heart, and considerably touched at the thoughtfulness of his fiancée in telephoning to the hotel to be on the lookout for him, Mr. Jones followed his guide, who led him to a comfortable room, immaculately clean and with a bright fire blazing on the hearth, and here he lost no time in removing his sodden outer garments. The watchman left him for a moment, to return at once with a night-robe and dressing-gown. In compliance with his good-humored offer, Mr. Jones stretched himself upon the bed for the suggested rubbing-down.

“Go easy on the right-hand side of my body; I’ve got a game appendix there,” he warned.

“Then be yer lave, sorr, I'll put a bit of a poultice on; it will take out every stitch of the pain.”

“You’re a corker!” observed Mr. Jones, admiringly. “I guess the best thing that I can do is to put myself absolutely in your hands, and maybe I won’t need an operation, after all.” He yawned, and his lids dropped heavily. In the reaction of warmth and comfort, the effects of the whiskey began to make themselves apparent.

“’Twill save the both av us a dale of throuble, sorr!” observed the Irishman, with a chuckle.

Too drowsy to be surprised at this somewhat peculiar speech, Mr. Jones was about to sink into a pleasant doze, when suddenly, from down the corridor outside his room, a strident voice was uplifted in declamation.

“Water! water! water! Verily, verily I say unto you that I am sore athirst. Where art thou, thou Hibernian hound? It is I, the prophet Ezekiel, who calls!”

“What in the dickens is the matter with that fellow?” demanded Mr. Jones, sitting suddenly upright.

“Nivir mind him, sorr!” replied his huge valet, reassuringly; “troth, ’tis not wather that do be ailin’ him, d’ye see?”

“Oh—tight, eh?” replied Mr. Jones in relief, for there had been a note in the high voice that was strangely disturbing.

When Tim, the night-watchman, returned from his ministrations to the thirsty prophet, Ezekiel, Mr. Jones was sleeping like an innocent child. The big Irishman stole softly from the room, closed the door behind him and slid a heavy bolt, which, in a manner different from the custom of most Summer hotels, was attached to the outside of the solidly constructed door. Next, after a swift scrutiny of the corridor, he walked quickly to the stairs, which he descended heavily, but noiselessly, his rubber-soled shoes falling with a soft thud suggestive of the step of one of the great carnivora. In front of a screen door at the end of the lower hall, he stopped and rapped several times.

‘What is it?” finally came a drowsy voice in answer.

“’Tis me, docthor, Tim. ‘K.’ shlipped out av the house this avenin’ just afther I came on”

“What!” came sharply from within. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Och, ye were shlapin’ that aisy, docthor, dear, I hadn’t the heart to wake ye!” replied Tim, soothingly. As a matter of fact, he had himself been peacefully asleep. “Sure, there’s no harm done, sorr. The minute he was gone I started to luk around for him, and there he was be the stove in the office, havin’ just stepped out for a rowl in the mud.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back in his crib, sorr, rubbed down slick an’ smooth wid alcyhol and a bit av soap-poultice on the stummick av him.”

“All right—don’t let him get out again.”

“Divil a fear, sorr. Good night, sorr!”

Mr. Jones was aroused from deep oblivion by a sweetly modulated girlish voice at his elbow. Looking up in amazement and incredulity, he was scandalized beyond expression to discover, standing unconcernedly at the side of his bed, a charming vision in snowy muslin. In one hand, she held a small glass containing a colorless solution.

“What a splendid sleep you have had,” she observed, pleasantly; “it’s almost ten o’clock!”

“W-w-what?” replied the palsied Mr. Jones.

Her pretty face smiled down at him reassuringly. “I thought that you would never wake up,” she replied, brightly, “so I had to wake you, myself. Now drink this, like a good fellow,” she added, coaxingly.

“B-b-but who—are you?”

“Oh, I’m your day-nurse. You haven't seen me before. Miss Halloway was on when you came in last evening, you know.”

“She was!” exclaimed Mr. Jones, blushing furiously. “Why, I thought it was—eh—an Irishman”

She laughed, merrily. “Oh, that was Tim—he’s the night-watchman. Now drink this, like a good man, and it will clear things up!”

“Then you'd better bring the bottle!” replied Mr. Jones, eagerly draining the contents of the glass. “Jove! what whiskey that of the old man’s must be!” he added, under his breath.

His attractive attendant deftly swung a small, enameled washstand to the side of the bed, and poured some water into a basin.

“I say—what’s that for?” demanded Mr. Jones, in surprise.

“For you to wash your face and hands,” she replied, smoothly.

“B-b-but I don’t think that I understand!” replied the bewildered Mr. Jones. “Where am I, anyway?” He grasped his head firmly in both hands and closed his eyes, seeking vainly a solution of the perplexing mystery. “Am I off my base—or what? I thought that—the—automobile broke down—and”

“There, there!” she interrupted, soothingly, while an expression of real pity crossed her fresh young face. “Don’t worry about that; you are with your friends. How does your side feel this morning? Have you any pain?”

“Not a bit—by Jove!—what’s this contraption around my waist? Oh, for heaven’s sake!—what the dickens—I beg your pardon, but I can’t seem to get straightened out! What is this place?”

Under the stress of his emotion, Mr. Jones’s aristocratic face had suddenly grown so wild that the nurse surveyed him anxiously, and quickly touched a button at the head of the bed. A youth in white duck clothes appeared in the doorway.

“You had better get Tim,” whispered the nurse. “I’m afraid he’s going to be violent. Has the doctor come yet?”

“He’s in the operating-room. He says to give the anesthetic in here.”

A minute later, as the now panic-stricken Mr. Jones sat staring wildly about him, the huge Irishman entered the room, followed by an alert young man who carried in his hands an odd-looking apparatus of rubber and gleaming metal, from which there emanated a sickening and forbidding odor. With infinite relief, Mr. Jones’s eyes fell upon his friend of the night before, who, in the present stress of his emotions, seemed to be the first actuality which his tortured vision had beheld in this weird place of enigmas.

“Oh, there you are!” he exclaimed, in relief. “Now just get my clothes, and ask these people to get out of here. I'll make my inquiries by mail.”

“Everything is all ready, Miss Vincent,” remarked he of the strange, malodorous machine. “I suppose he'll kick up a fuss, but I guess that Tim and George can restrain him.” He turned to the pallid Jones.

“Now lie down, my friend, and do as I tell you!” he commanded, authoritatively. He walked to the bedside, and pushed Mr. Jones gently but firmly back upon his pillow.

“Who the devil are you?” cried the agonized Jones, furiously; then, at the pressure of the other's hand, all self-restraint was swept aside. Arising suddenly in bed, he struck out with all of the force of his athletic right arm. The blow landed squarely over the young man’s eye, and sent him flying across the room. The next instant, Mr. Jones was pinioned firmly by two pairs of mighty arms. He saw his enemy returning swiftly, his face filled with a fiendish purpose. Something soft and suffocating was crammed down over his nose and mouth. For an instant, he struggled desperately, striving to cry out; then his senses whirled in space, and he sank into oblivion.

Young Dr. Cutler and his youthful assistant walked smartly down the path leading from the sanatorium, and turned into the Pine Ridge turnpike. The surgeon was in the happy state of self-satisfaction which usually follows a necessary operation skilfully performed, and unlikely to be followed by aught but a safe and speedy convalescence. As they passed through the gate, he turned to his assistant.

“That was a typical case for operative interference, Dudley. Another attack would probably have put that man out of the hunt for good. As it is, he should make a good recovery, and you can’t tell, it might even have a good effect upon his mental condition. Operations sometimes do.”

“Funny case of aberration,” replied the younger man, tenderly stroking a raised discoloration over his left eye. “Thinks he’s an automobile, doesn’t he? By George, for a minute or two I was rather inclined to agree with him!”

They had turned into the highroad and were walking toward the hotel about a quarter of a mile farther on, where they had planned to lunch with a mutual friend. As they passed a deserted farm-house which stood a little way back from the road, there suddenly fell upon their ears a series of strange and discordant cries.

“Chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug— toot-toot—sh-h-h-h-h—s-s-shoo—shoo”

“What in—” began the surgeon, in amazement, for the sounds were obviously proceeding from the lusty throat of a man. The next instant there was a crash and a rattle of planks. A weird figure, swathed in a mass of unclean bedding, hurtled suddenly from the doorless aperture and bore swiftly toward them.

“Toot-toot!” he yelled, wildly, “get out the way—I’m an automobile!”

Too paralyzed to move, they stood open-mouthed and staring in the middle of the road. He of the flowing robes never faltered in his mad career, but, bearing down upon the surgeon, collided with him with such violence that both men rolled in the dust of the road.

The surgeon was the first to recover his feet. His assailant lay where he had fallen, emitting a strange hissing noise.

“Why didn’t you clear the track?” the latter demanded, peevishly. “Confound you—now my boiler’s burned out!”

For a moment, the surgeon stared down at him in a dismay too profound for any expression; then, with a feeble sigh, he subsided, an inert mass on the damp grass of the roadside.

“Rum!” he gasped, through quivering lips. “Give me rum! Quarts of it—gallons of it! tuns of it! Let me drink and never afterward awake!”

Mr. Worthington Jones reclined luxuriously against his pillows, and surveyed the abject surgeon with the indulgent eye of a generous conqueror. In his hand he held a small bottle, tightly corked, in which there floated a once menacing portion of his anatomy. At intervals his eyes would fall upon it with a satisfaction too deep for words.

“Well, doctor,” he finally observed, “of course it was an inexcusable error on your part, but I am not disposed to be nasty about it!”

“My dear fellow,” replied the surgeon, meekly, “I unhesitatingly admit that the joke is on me!”

“Not altogether,” replied Mr. Jones, kindly; “in fact,” he continued, “while there is but slight ground for the supposition, I am inclined to fear that many of my friends might take the other point of view.”

“Many of one’s friends are such asses,” began the surgeon, hopefully, “that, while the fault is mine, I suppose if the story was to get around, you might never hear the last of it.”

“Possibly—that might apply to either of us,” replied Mr. Jones, sweetly. “The medical profession is so hungry for the chance to roast a colleague; especially one who is young, ambitious and not without a certain ability.”

The surgeon straightened his back.

“Have you—eh—any proposition—eh—anything to suggest?” he inquired, coldly.

“I have,” replied Mr. Jones. “Suppose that I had consulted you professionally. Would you have advised an operation? I ask you this as man to man.”

“If I had not,” replied the surgeon, with deep feeling, “I should have been unfit to practise my profession.”

“Very good. What would have been your fee for such an operation, including the subsequent treatment?”

“In your case,” replied the surgeon, qualifiedly, “five hundred dollars would have covered it, not including your hospital expenses.”

“Very good. I have always understood that these cursed things”—shaking the bottle savagely—“were expensive luxuries. Now, doctor, I have a proposition to make, actuated not by the fear of ridicule, but by loftier motives. We will consider that I have sought this operation, and that it was all done according to Hoyle. Send me your bill for five hundred dollars, and I will mail you a cheque—provided the story does not get out—especially to the ears of my fiancée, Miss March, and her family.”

A sudden light flashed in upon the alert perceptions of the surgeon; he strove in vain to stifle the audible laugh that arose to his lips. From his pillow Mr. Jones grinned back, expansively.

“You are more than generous!” cried the surgeon, enthusiastically, “but really, you know, I can’t take a fee for a bull-headed blunder like this!”

“I would much prefer it,” replied Mr. Jones, decidedly.

“Oh—well—” answered the surgeon, weakly, “‘of course, if you insist”

“I do. Do you think that you can close the mouth of the cub who smothered me? B-r-r-gh!”

“As easily as you closed his left eye,” replied Dr. Cutler, emphatically.

“And this loco outfit?”

“They will be silent as the grave—for their own sakes.”

“Good! Then it is a bargain, doctor. When you go down, will you kindly telephone the glad news to Miss March?”

“I will do so at once,” replied the doctor, feelingly.

Early the following forenoon, while Mr. Jones was resting comfortably, there came a rustle outside his door which sounded to his expectant ears like the flutter of the wings of angels. An instant later two round arms were thrown tenderly about his neck, and his face was covered with tears and kisses.

“Oh, Worthington—my own darling boy—my dear, brave hero!—to think of your coming here all alone, and without saying a word to any one! My precious!”

“My dear little girl,” replied Mr. Jones, with deep feeling, “I am entitled to no praise whatever. I simply could not help myself. Sometimes, you know, our destiny is in higher hands than our own! I’m glad it wasn’t an amputation, though!” he added, with a shudder.

“You great, big-hearted darling—and to think of your daring to come to this awful place!”

“You do it an injustice, dear. I was never in a more godly company in all my life. The prophet Ezekiel is just next door, there are two John the Baptists down-stairs, and there is an angel in my room at the present moment.”