"What is this?" asked this same surgeon, pointing to the flat of the arm, where the engraved legend was almost obscured with a dark stain.
Hunston changed colour and fidgeted about.
"I don't know."
"There is something written."
"Yes, yes, so I believe, but it is obscured by that stain—a stain—"
He peered closer into the arm yet, and looked serious, as turning to Hunston, he said—
"Why, it is a blood-stain."
"No, no!" replied Hunston, hurriedly; "impossible. It can not be."
"Impossible or not," said the surgeon, "blood it is, and nothing but blood. Yet I see that, in spite of this stain, the reading is clear enough."
"Scarcely," said Hunston.