This time he laid it all to Anne. "That infernal woman will be the ruin
of me," said Geoffrey, taking up his hat. "I must try the dumb-bells."

The pursuit of the new remedy for stimulating a sluggish brain took him
to a public house, kept by the professional pedestrian who had the honor
of training him when he contended at Athletic Sports.

"A private room and the dumb-bells!" cried Geoffrey. "The heaviest you
have got."

He stripped himself of his upper clothing, and set to work, with the
heavy weights in each hand, waving them up and down, and backward and
forward, in every attainable variety o f movement, till his magnificent
muscles seemed on the point of starting through his sleek skin. Little
by little his animal spirits roused themselves. The strong
exertion intoxicated the strong man. In sheer excitement he swore
cheerfully--invoking thunder and lightning, explosion and blood, in
return for the compliments profusely paid to him by the pedestrian and
the pedestrian's son. "Pen, ink, and paper!" he roared, when he could
use the dumb-bells no longer. "My mind's made up; I'll write, and have
done with it!" He sat down to his writing on the spot; actually finished
the letter; another minute would have dispatched it to the post--and, in
that minute, the maddening indecision took possession of him once more.
He opened the letter again, read it over again, and tore it up again.
"I'm out of my mind!" cried Geoffrey, fixing his big bewildered blue
eyes fiercely on the professor who trained him. "Thunder and lightning!
Explosion and blood! Send for Crouch."

Crouch (known and respected wherever English manhood is known and
respected) was a retired prize-fighter. He appeared with the third