masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many
extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in
crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had
taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by
the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I
could hold out no longer.

"Which is it to-day?" I asked,--"morphine or cocaine?"

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume
which he had opened. "It is cocaine," he said,--"a seven-per-
cent. solution. Would you care to try it?"

"No, indeed," I answered, brusquely. "My constitution has not
got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any
extra strain upon it."

He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he
said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I
find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to
the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."

"But consider!" I said, earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain
may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological
and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and
may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a
black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth
the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk