“I have a pain,” he said, “in my left hip, where the stomach dips down over the spleen. A large knob has formed there. A lizard, perhaps, has got into me. Or perhaps a small hedge-hog.”

Dr. Yen thereupon made use of the test for lizards and hedge-hogs—to wit, the application of madder dye to the Adam’s apple, turning it lemon yellow if any sort of reptile is within, and violet if there is a mammal—but it failed to operate as the books describe. Being thus led to suspect a misplaced and wild-growing bone, perhaps from the vertebral column, the doctor decided to have recourse to surgery, and so, after the proper propitiation of the gods, he administered to his eminent patient a draught of opium water, and having excluded the wailing women of the household from the sick chamber, he cut into the protuberance with a small, sharp knife, and soon had the mysterious object in his hand.... It was the vial of dissolved gnats’ eyes—still full and tightly corked! Worse, it was not the vial of dissolved gnats’ eyes, but a vial of common burdock juice—the remedy for infants griped by their mothers’ milk....

But when the eminent Chu Yi-Foy, emerging from his benign stupor, made a sign that he would gaze upon the cause of his distress, it was a bone that Dr. Yen Li-Shen showed him—an authentic bone, ovoid and evil-looking—and lately the knee cap of one Ho Kwang, brass maker in the street of Szchen-Kiang. Dr. Yen carried this bone in his girdle to keep off the black, blue and yellow plagues. Chu Yi-Foy, looking upon it, wept the soft, grateful tears of an old man.

“This is twice,” he said, “that you, my learned friend, have saved my life. I have hitherto given you, in token of my gratitude, the rents, rates, imposts and taxes, of two streets, and of the related alleys, courts and lanes. I now give you the weight of that bone in diamonds, in rubies, in pearls or in emeralds, as you will. And whichever of the four you choose, I give you the other three also. For is it not said by K’ung Fu-tsze, ‘The good physician bestows what the gods merely promise’?”

And Dr. Yen Li-Shen lowered his eyes and bowed. But he was too old in the healing art to blush.

III.—Neighbours

Once I lay in hospital a fortnight while an old man died by inches across the hall. Apparently a very painful, as it was plainly a very tedious business. I would hear him breathing heavily for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then he would begin shrieking in agony and yelling for his orderly: “Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!” Now and then a nurse would come into my room and report progress: “The old fellow’s kidneys have given up; he can’t last the night,” or, “I suppose the next choking spell will fetch him.” Thus he fought his titanic fight with the gnawing rats of death, and thus I lay listening, myself quickly recovering from a sanguinary and indecent operation.... Did the shrieks of that old man startle me, worry me, torture me, set my nerves on edge? Not at all. I had my meals to the accompaniment of piteous yells to God, but day by day I ate them more heartily. I lay still in bed and read a book or smoked a cigar. I damned my own twinges and fading malaises. I argued ignorantly with the surgeons. I made polite love to the nurses who happened in. At night I slept soundly, the noise retreating benevolently as I dropped off. And when the old fellow died at last, snarling and begging for mercy with his last breath, the unaccustomed stillness made me feel lonesome and sad, like a child robbed of a tin whistle.... But when a young surgeon came in half an hour later, and, having dined to his content, testified to it by sucking his teeth, cold shudders ran through me from stem to stern.

IV.—From the Chart

Temperature: 99.7. Respiration: rising to 65 and then suddenly suspended. The face is flushed, and the eyes are glazed and half-closed. There is obviously a sub-normal reaction to external stimuli. A fly upon the ear is unnoticed. The auditory nerve is anesthetic. There is a swaying of the whole body and an apparent failure of co-ordination, probably the effect of some disturbance in the semi-circular canals of the ear. The hands tremble and then clutch wildly. The head is inclined forward as if to approach some object on a level with the shoulder. The mouth stands partly open, and the lips are puckered and damp. Of a sudden there is a sound as of a deep and labored inspiration, suggesting the upward curve of Cheyne-Stokes breathing. Then comes silence for 40 seconds, followed by a quick relaxation of the whole body and a sharp gasp....

One of the internes has kissed a nurse.