last ingredient,--that powder which he put in with his own hand! Had he
let me see it, I would first have analyzed it, and discovered its
component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been
poison. But its effect is good. Poh! I will taste again, because of this
weak, agued, miserable state of mine; though it is a shame in me, a man of
decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a
comfortable kind of thing."

Meantime, that single drop (for good Dr. Dolliver had immediately put a
stopper into the bottle) diffused a sweet odor through the chamber, so
that the ordinary fragrances and scents of apothecaries' stuff seemed to
be controlled and influenced by it, and its bright potency also dispelled
a certain dimness of the antiquated room.

The Doctor, at the pressure of a great need, had given incredible pains to
the manufacture of this medicine; so that, reckoning the pains rather than
the ingredients (all except one, of which he was not able to estimate the
cost nor value), it was really worth its weight in gold. And, as it
happened, he had bestowed upon it the hard labor of his poor life, and the
time that was necessary for the support of his family, without return; for
the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had
never come back; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a
corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a
trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick-
knack. But, all things considered, the honest and simple apothecary
thought that he might make free with the liquid to such small extent as
was necessary for himself. And there had been something in the concoction
that had struck him; and he had been fast breaking lately; and so, in the
dreary fantasy and lonely recklessness of his old age, he had suddenly
bethought himself of this medicine (cordial,--as the strange man called