"Let him alone, sir," said the preacher quickly. "There's no need to touch him again. Oh, ay, I've no sort o' doubt ye know a deal more nor I do; if ye put your power down to th' same source, happen ye'd be a bit tenderer in your way o' using it; ye say it 'ud come to the same, but some o' your patients 'ud feel a difference."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders; if any one but Barnabas Thorpe had commented on his want of feeling, and infliction of pain not always necessary, he would have snubbed him ruthlessly; but, with the evidence before him of a disregard to personal injury, that had wrung genuine admiration from him, he couldn't accuse the preacher of undue and effeminate softness.
He was not naturally cruel; but a man must be upheld by an uncommonly high aim if he can work constantly among brutal and debased natures without either giving way to despair or hardening his heart.
There was a story current in the prison about his having got a man off hanging on condition of his being allowed to try a new operation on him. He was no philanthropist, but he was fond of his profession and a great experimenter; there was not a rogue in Newgate but had a wholesome awe of the little red-haired surgeon.
Hopping Jack was actually grateful to Barnabas.
"It's a case of 'when the devil was ill,'" Dr. Merrill said. "He won't listen to you when he can do without your bandaging, Thorpe! He'll be able to mimic you to the life by the time he's up again—drawl and all."
"But that won't drive me to hold my tongue," said Barnabas smiling.
And, as it happened, the doctor was wrong. Hopping Jack refrained from caricaturing the preacher, even when he got better.
"It ain't that I couldn't!" he said regretfully to Barnabas. "I could do you now as you wouldn't know which was yourself! you're easy to take off; and I could twist 'em all round to listen to me—every man Jack of 'em; but I won't."
"Ye'd be playing a scurvy trick," said Barnabas; "an' in Satan's service. He's a bad paymaster."