"No," answered Harry Wittingham, "I have a sort of burning in my throat."
"Great irritation of stomach?" said Mr. Slattery, in a solemn tone. "Have you met with any accident lately? Run a nail into your hand or foot, or any thing of that kind?"
"No," answered Harry Wittingham, "but a damned dog bit me just above the heel six weeks ago, and it is not quite well yet."
"Let me look at the wound," said Mr. Slattery, "it may be producing irritation."
The shoe and stocking were soon removed, and Mr. Slattery perceived four distinct marks of a dog's fangs in the tendon and muscles of Harry Wittingham's leg. At each there was a round lump raised above the skin, and from two of them a small, sharply-defined red line was running up the leg towards the body.
Mr. Slattery bled him largely immediately, and telling him he dared say he would be quite well in two or three days, returned home, and sent off a man on horseback to the county town for a bottle of the Ormskirk medicine. The Ormskirk medicine arrived; but instead of being well in two or three days, in not much more than a week after Harry Wittingham was in his grave.