He walked up to the bed, with Tom Candlish quailing before him, and watching his eyes as some timid animal might when expecting capture or a blow.
“I protest—I—”
“Hold your tongue, sir,” cried Salis sternly. “Dr North is here for your good. Lie still.”
“I don’t know whether my way is right,” he added to himself, “but firmness appears to be best with the brute.”
North seemed to hesitate a few minutes—fighting between routine, the desire to do what was right by the man he believed he had nearly killed, and his intense dislike, even hatred, of the scoundrel for whom he told himself he had been jilted by a wretched, shameless girl.
Salis looked on curiously.
“Effect of the power of the eye,” he said to himself, as he saw North lay his hands upon the injured man’s shoulders, and, bending down, gaze into his eyes for a few moments. “By George! Horace North is a big fellow in his profession, and I shall begin to believe in psychology, mesmerism, animal magnetism, and the rest of it, before I’ve done.”
He leaned forward to gaze intently at what was going on.
“Quells him at once,” he said to himself. “Humph! he needn’t be quite so rough.”
This was consequent upon a quick, brusque examination of the patient, which evidently gave Tom Candlish a great deal of pain.