Page:How I Cured a Hopeless Paralytic.pdf/5

Rh of the lead-poisoning; and if anything cropped up to detain me I had thought of putting off the two latter visits till the afternoon, although Artlett I intended in any case to see early. I still have a vivid recollection of the intense disgust I felt when on coming down to breakfast I found waiting for me not one message only, but three—all from Stonewood, too, and all fresh cases! My trip to Southampton bade fair to be a mere ride to the analyst's and back again, if, indeed, I ever got there at all. However, there was no help for it: the life of a medical man is one long string of self-denials! I recalled somewhat bitterly an old theory of mine: how much more essential to a doctor than a priest was a life of celibacy, the softer and more intimate relations of life being so constantly supplanted by the calls of professional duty, if not of humanity.

I packed my carrier with the samples I had accumulated in the last few days, and having assured Artlett (quite uselessly) that the murder plot had extended to Stonewood, I rode on there, and lost no time in visiting the first new patient. He was a blacksmith, and I was more than startled by the strong family likeness of his symptoms to those of the others in the village. He had been a fighting-man, I learned, and had lost all his teeth in early life, so there was little hospitality for the blue line on his gums; all the same, I felt certain that it ought to have been there, and, wondering what I should discover next, I went on to an agricultural labourer's cottage. He was a trifle more intelligent than the one I saw at first, who, by the way, lived next door to him. When I came to examine him I was astounded to find all the familiar symptoms as well marked as in any of the others! I was speechless—a fact which, I afterwards learnt, had greatly impressed the patient, with whom my reputation for profound wisdom was established for all time.

Somehow or other, I managed to find my way through the village to the "Goose and Gridiron," whence the third message came. Here I saw the youth who was barman and general factotum of the little ale-house, kept by a widow. By this time I might have been excused had I regarded every ailment of the Stonewood men as a proof of lead-poisoning; but when the ostler commenced to talk of his