The Yellow Flag: A Novel. Volume 2 (of 3)

Transcriber's Note: http://www.archive.org/details/yellowflagnovel02yate (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
'That single effort by which we stop short in the downhill path to perdition is itself a greater exertion of virtue than an hundred acts of justice.' OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
Doctor Haughton stared hard at his old friend, who had just made such an astounding announcement--stared hard, but said nothing. Naturally a reticent man, in his capacity of physician he had had a great many odd things confided to him in his life, and had consequently not merely learned the value of silence, but had almost lost the faculty of astonishment.
After a minute's pause he turned to the little crowd, and said in a quiet, business-like way, 'Just four of you lift this poor gentleman's body, two at the head and two at the feet, and carry it over to the tavern I see on the other side of the road.--Gibson,' to the coachman, 'you go with them and pay them for their trouble. See it properly placed on a bed or sofa somewhere, and have the door locked, and tell the landlord he will be properly paid, and that a hearse will come out and fetch it away this evening.'
When Gibson returned and reported that all these directions had been properly obeyed, he mounted his box again, and the gentlemen, re-entering the carriage, drove off swiftly towards London, leaving the little crowd in the road gazing after them.
The gentlemen inside the brougham composed themselves comfortably, each in his corner, looking out of the window, and waiting for the other to speak. Each was most anxious to hear all that the other might have to tell him, but both knew the professional etiquette of caution so well that neither liked to be the first to commence the conversation. At length Mr. Broadbent, who was a year or two younger, and considerably more impulsive than his friend, broke the silence by saying, in a casual manner, and as though the subject had but little interest for him, 'Odd that I should have been talking to you about that man this morning, and that we should have come upon him just now, wasn't it?'