disremember now what partickler investment you said he was goin' to make
with it," he continued, appealing with easy indifference to his friend.

Of course Wingate did not reply, but looked at the "Fool," who, with
a troubled face, was rubbing his legs softly. After a pause, he turned
deprecatingly toward his visitors.

"Ye didn't enny of ye ever hev a sort of tremblin' in your legs, a
kind o' shakiness from the knee down? Suthin'," he continued, slightly
brightening with his topic,--"suthin' that begins like chills, and
yet ain't chills? A kind o' sensation of goneness here, and a kind o'
feelin' as it you might die suddint?--when Wright's Pills don't somehow
reach the spot, and quinine don't fetch you?"

"No!" said Wingate with a curt directness, and the air of
authoritatively responding for his friends,--"no, never had. You was
speakin' of this yer investment."

"And your bowels all the time irregular?" continued Hawkins, blushing
under Wingate's eye, and yet clinging despairingly to his theme, like a
shipwrecked mariner to his plank.

Wingate did not reply, but glanced significantly at the rest. Hawkins
evidently saw this recognition of his mental deficiency, and said
apologetically, "You was saying suthin' about my investment?"

"Yes," said Wingate, so rapidly as to almost take Hawkins's breath
away,--"the investment you made in"--

"Rafferty's Ditch," said the "Fool" timidly.