The rest of the town, generally speaking, was at this late hour of midnight, also abed; but in the windows of Doctor Lake's office, on the second floor of the Planters' Bank building, lights burned, and on the leather couch in Doctor Lake's inner room a pudgy figure, which breathed heavily, was stretched at full length, its hands passively flat on its breast, its head done up in many windings of cotton batting and surgical bandages. Above this figure stood old Doctor Lake, holding in the open palm of his left hand a small, black, flattened object. The door leading to the outer office opened a foot and the woe-begone face and dripping eyes of Judge Priest appeared through the slit.
“Get out!” snapped Doctor Lake without turning his head.
“Lew, it's me!” said Judge Priest in the whisper that any civilised being other than a physician or a trained nurse instinctively assumes in the presence of a certain dread visitation. “I jest natchelly couldn't wait no longer—not another minute! I wouldn't 'a' traded one hair off of Jimmy Bagby's old grey head fur all the Beaver Yancys that ever was whelped. Lew, is there a chance?”
“Billy Priest,” said Doctor Lake severely, “the main trouble with you is that you're so liable to go off half-cocked. Beaver Yancy's not going to die—you couldn't kill him with an ax. I don't know how that story got round to-night. And Jim Bagby's all right too, except he's going to have one whale of a headache tomorrow. The bullet glanced round his skull and stopped under the scalp. Here 'tis—I just got it out.... Oh, Lord! Now look what you've done, bursting in here and blubbering all around the place!”
The swathed form on the couch sat up and cocked an eye out from beneath a low-drawn fold of cheesecloth.
“Is that you, Judge?” demanded Sergeant Bagby in his usual voice and in almost his usual manner.
“Yes, Jimmy; it's me.”
Judge Priest projected himself across the room toward his friend. He didn't run; he didn't jump; he didn't waddle—he projected himself.
“Yes, Jimmy, it's me.”
“Are any of the other boys out there in the other room?”