"Ah!" said the specialist; "so you cannot sleep; you hear voices;
you fancy you are being followed in the street. You don't think
these fancies spring entirely from the imagination? Not entirely
- just so. And you keep looking behind you, as though somebody
were at your elbow; and you prefer to sit with your back close to
the wall. Just so - just so. Distressing symptoms, to be sure,
but - but hardly to be wondered at in a man who has come through
your nervous strain." A keen professional light glittered in his
eyes. "And almost commonplace," he added, smiling, "compared with
the hallucinations you must have suffered from on that hen-coop!
Ah, my dear sir, the psychological interest of your case is very
great!"

"It may be," said I, brusquely. "But I come to you to get that
hen-coop out of my head, not to be reminded of it. Everybody asks
me about the damned thing, and you follow everybody else. I wish
it and I were at the bottom of the sea together!"

This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in my
present condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation and
extreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackest
despair. Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his
mettle, and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive
inquisition ever elicited from a medical man. His panacea was
somewhat in the nature of an anti-climax, but at least it had the
merits of simplicity and of common sense. A change of air - perfect
quiet - say a cottage in the country - not too near the sea. And
he shook my hand kindly when I left.