"Have I?" murmured the Baron, and sank down into his uneasy chair.
It was an awful thing to have the Phenomena. It might have been the
measles in Greek. Anything but that! Anything but _that_! But Dr.
ROOSTEM explained that "_phenomena_" is not Greek for measles, though
perhaps Phenomenon might be Greek for "one measle;" but this would be
singular, very singular.

"I must tap you," continued the friend-in-need. "No--no--don't be
alarmed. When I say 'tap,' I mean _sound_ you."

Then he began the woodpecking business. In the character of Dr.
Woodpecker he tapped at the hollow oak chest, sounded the Baron's
heart of oak, pronounced him true to the core, whacked him, smacked
him, insisted upon his calling out "Ninety-nine," in various tones,
so that it sounded like a duet to the old words, without much of the
tune--

"I'm ninety-nine,
I'm ninety-nine!"

the remainder of which the Baron had never heard, even in his earliest
childhood.

So it was a quarter of an hour of inspiration, musical and poetic,
and, at its expiration, Dr. MARK TAPLEY, as the Baron declared he must
henceforth be called, announced that there was nothing for it but to
make the Baron a close prisoner in his own castle, where he would have
to live up to the mark, as if he were to be shown, a few months hence,
at a prize cattle-show, among other Barons of Beef.