"I always carried this watch in my vest-pocket. I carry it now inside my waistband so they will have to pull me to pieces to get it.
"Well, about three o'clock in the morning—I had just heard the old clock in the tower strike, and was dozing off to sleep again—a footstep awoke me to consciousness. I looked through these doors"—here the Doctor was pointing to the folding doors of the office where we sat—"and through my bedroom saw the dim outline of a man moving about this room. He had my vest and trousers over his arm. I sprang up, but he was too quick for me, and before I could reach him he had slipped through the windows out on to the porch, down the yard, through the gate, and was gone.
"With him went my mother's watch, which was in the upper vest-pocket, and some fifty dollars in money. I didn't mind the money, but I did the watch. It was my mother's, a present from my father when they were first married, and had the initials 'E.M.S. from J.H.S.' engraved on the under side of the case. When she died I pasted the dear old lady's photograph inside the upper lid. I know almost everybody around here, and they all know me; they come in here with broken heads for me to sew up, and stab wounds, and such-like misfortunes, and when they heard what had happened to me they all did what they could.
"The Captain of the precinct came around, and everybody was very sorry, and they hunted the pawnshops, and I offered a reward—in fact, did all the foolish things you do when you have lost something you think a heap of. But no trace of the watch could be found, and so I gave it up and tried to forget it and couldn't. That's why I bought that cheap silver one. My only clew to the thief was the glimpse I had of a scar on his cheek and a slight dragging of his foot as he stepped about my room.
"One night last autumn there came a ring at the bell, and I let in a man with a slouch hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of his coat turned up. He was soaking wet, the water oozing from his shoes and slopping the oilcloth in the hall where he stood. I had never seen him before.
"'Doc,' he said, 'I want you.' They all call me 'Doc' around here—especially this kind of a man—and I saw right away where he belonged.
"'What for?'
"'My pal's sick.'
"'What's the matter with him?'
"'Well, he's sick—took bad. He'll die if he don't git help.'