can describe them to him."

More familiar with the symptoms, poor woman, she undoubtedly was,
though I was familiar enough; and so, for the matter of that, was the
doctor, whose ledger must have registered at least a dozen similar
"attacks." But I understood at once her true reason for not
entrusting me with the errand. It would require all her courage, all
her magnificent impudence, to browbeat Dr. Spargo into coming, for I
doubt if the Stimcoes had ever paid him a stiver.

"But you can be very useful," she went on, in a tone unusually
gentle. "You will find Mr. Stimcoe in his bedroom--at least, I hope
so, for he suffers from a hallucination that some person or persons
unknown have incarcerated him in a French war-prison, such being the
effect of to-day's--er--proceedings upon his highly strung nature.
The illusion being granted, one can hardly be surprised at his
resenting it."

I nodded, and promised to do my best.

"You are a very good boy, Harry," said Mrs. Stimcoe--a verdict so
different from that which I had arrived expecting, or with any right
to expect, that I stood for some twenty seconds gaping after her as
she pulled her shawl closer and went on her heroic way.

I found Mr. Stimcoe in _deshabille_, on the first-floor landing,
under the derisive surveillance of Masters Doggy Bates, Bob
Pilkington, and Scotty Maclean, whose graceless mirth echoed down to
me from the stair-rail immediately overhead. Ignoring my preceptor's
invitation to bide a wee and take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang