A young man in spectacles entered. He asked a few rapid questions, while he opened a case of instruments on the counter at the feet of the prostrate figure. He listened at its chest with the stethoscope and without it, and shook his head, pulled out a lancet, and pushed the shirt sleeve up the hanging arm.
"Hold the sleeve, so that it doesn't slip down!" he said with a glance up at Silla; he took her to be a member of the household.
The lancet pierced and pierced again. The ashen grey face of the girl looked into his, as if she would beg him for only one drop of that which was the life.
There came out something like a thick, dark syrup.
He listened again, felt again; one more trial with the lancet, and it was with an air of superiority, and a mouth drawn up like his professor's, that the young bachelor of medicine turned to those assembled and pronounced his concise verdict:
"Stone dead! The man's stone dead!—from drink!"
His words were followed by a cry from Silla, who threw herself upon her father.
"Is that his daughter?" asked the young doctor. He carefully wiped his lancet at the light, and put his instruments together preparatory to going, but gazed at the same time over his spectacles at her. Heedless of everything, she cried incessantly over the body.
"You aren't dead, are you, father? Father!"
It was a wild sorrow, without consideration or bashfulness, and the young doctor felt that he was witnessing an unpleasant scene from life in the outskirts of the town. He had done his duty and hastened out.