“I will tell him you are comfortable, Ned, and I should like to tell him that you had eaten your breakfast.”
“Oh, yes! Tell him that. Say I ate it voraciously.” And he swallowed down the cup of tea and took a bite at the roll.
“I will tell him,” Dr. Green said. “I will come in again this evening, and will perhaps bring in with me a little medicine. You will be all the better for a soothing draught.”
“I want no draughts,” Ned said. “Why should I? I am as right as ninepence.”
“Very well. We will see,” the doctor said. “Now I must be going my rounds.”
As soon as he had gone Ned began pacing up and down the room, as he had done the whole of the past night without intermission. Gradually, however, the powerful narcotic began to take effect. His walk became slower, his head began to droop, and at last he stumbled toward the bed in the corner of the room, threw himself heavily down, and was almost instantly sound asleep. Five minutes later the door opened quietly and Dr. Green entered.
He had been listening outside the door, had noticed the change in the character of Ned's walk, and having heard the fall upon the bed, and had no fear of his rousing himself at his entrance. The boy was lying across the bed, and the doctor, who was a powerful man, lifted him gently and laid him with his head upon the pillow. He felt his pulse, and lifted his eyelid.
“It was a strong dose,” he said to himself, “far stronger than I should have dared give him at any other time, but nothing less would have acted, with his brain in such an excited state. I must keep in the town today and look in from time to time and see how he is going on. It may be that I shall have to take steps to rouse him.”
At the next visit Dr. Green looked somewhat anxious as he listened to the boy's breathing and saw how strongly he was under the influence of the narcotic.
“Under any other circumstances,” he said to the chief constable, who had entered the room with him, “I should take strong measures to arouse him at once, but as it is I will risk it. I know it is a risk both for him and me, for a nice scrape I should get in if he slipped through my fingers; but unless he gets sleep I believe his brain will go, and anything is better than that.”