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 you two pounds for every half-mile I do under three, and you give me one pound for every mile I do over."

"No," said Tallis, shaking his head, "that would be compounding a suicide. Your will might carry you on for four miles; but you'd finish the journey on a gate."

"You're as gloomy as a panel-doctor during an epidemic," laughed Beresford. "That's the worst of you medicos, you do everything by rule of thumb. You say certain things have happened and consequently certain other things must grow out of them as a natural sequence. You make no allowance for the personal equation."

"I've made a great deal of allowance for your personal equation, my son," replied Tallis grimly, "otherwise I should long ago have certified you insane."

"Why, I'm a perfect epic of sanity compared with you," protested Beresford. "Look how you used to scandalise the nurse by the way you talked to me when, according to all the rules of the game, I ought to have been left quiet."

"And which soothed you the most," enquired Tallis quietly, "being left alone to your thoughts, or told what you wanted to know?"

"Oh, it answered all right, of course."

Tallis shrugged his shoulders.

"It's too bad," laughed Beresford, "here have you dragged me back to life again, and now I'm bullying you. It's been ripping having you about.