While Deborah built up her charcoal fire and carried the brazier to the table, Carroll went over to a corner cupboard, opened its door, and looked in upon the five shelves where, ranged in orderly rows, stood all the phials and flasks that Deborah had been able to collect. Only a dozen or so contained more or less muddy-looking liquids, and on each of these was pasted a paper label covered with fine writing. One after another the doctor picked them up and examined them.
"Aha!" he exclaimed, finally, taking the cork from one, and smelling the cloudy mixture within. "Aha! You have it here! I thought so. Now, this is precisely the thing that I should advise."
Deborah went over to him. "What! The monkshood? 'Tis a poor solution. For want of pure alcohol, I had to use rum."
"No matter. Let us manipulate this a bit, Debby, instead of your tobacco there. For this is necessary. And while we are distilling some pure aconitum napellus, I will tell you a little story, and weave for you a prettier romance than ever you did find in The Chyrurgien's Mate or old Galen's Art of Physick, that once I found you with—or even the Whole Duty of Man, which I swear you have not read."
"Yes, I have. But the story, Dr. Carroll! Was't the news you had for my ears?"
"Even so, mistress. Now—careful with the body. We mustn't spill this—where's your filter? That's it. A slow evaporation will be best. Can you fix the other end? Good! You have a deft hand.
"Well, now, the tale runs this wise. You heard me say that I was at the piers when the Baltimore came in this morning. I'm half-owner in her, and, besides that, Croft is a very good friend of mine, and 'tis four months since he sailed from here. He—the captain, Debby—came off from the ship in his boat, looking a bit tired and haggard, and more glad to get home again than ever I saw him before. They'd a nasty voyage, been short of water for a week, and, besides that, he had a tale to tell about one of his passengers. At Portsmouth only four came on board, one of them a young fellow, a Frenchman, known to Lord Baltimore, who commended him to the care of Croft. It appears that the young man is of the nobility and high up in Court society at his home—Paris, I suppose. But, for some reason unknown, he packed himself on board the Baltimore and sailed for a place certainly far enough away from his friends and his people, whoever they are. Croft says that it can't be an unlawful thing he's done to make him come away, for the Lord Proprietary himself came down to the ship with him and tried to persuade him to give up the idea of coming. I suggested to Croft that, if it were not outlawry, love were the thing to send a man flying like a fool from civilization; and Croft vows I hit it. This noble Marquis de something-or-other, Croft said, mooned about the ship like a soul in purgatory for the first weeks out, and thereupon he fell sick in good earnest. It seems he's been in a raving fever now for days past, sometimes delirious, sometimes in coma. He's talked overmuch, from what I can hear, about Lewis, the French King, and a lot of madames, and a Henry—his rival, perhaps—and I don't know what all.—See, there's the first vapor. Now 'twill be just right.—Well, Croft said he must see this man safe off his hands and in some place where he could be cared for, before he'd make report of the voyage. So, Debby, I sent a black up to the ordinary of Mrs. Miriam Vawse, and she came down herself to the wharf, just as they got the man ashore—de Mailly, his name is. By the great Plutarch, Deb, he's the man for us! Never have I seen a creature in such condition! I think he must have been well enough looking once. But now!—He's a skeleton from fever. His face is shrunken and as bright as a hunting-coat. His hair—'tis long and black—tangled into a mat; and his clothes, of excellent make they are, hang about him like bags. He was conscious when he landed, but I didn't hear him speak a single time as we drove him up the hill and to the ordinary, where Mrs. Miriam is to care for him.
"Now, Deborah, here's my part of the tale for you. To-morrow, when you come in town for the sale, after you dine with us at noon, I shall manage so that you go down to the Vawse house and yourself see this fellow, judge his symptoms, and administer this very stuff—that is coming out fine and clear now—to him, in your own way. 'Twill be the best practice you could have; you could scarce make the man worse; and 'twould be a grand thing, eh, Deb, to accomplish such a cure as that?—My faith, you'll be having me return to the profession in a year more! But hang me if I'd not be found a better practitioner—with your assistance—than Richards, dispenser of poisons that he is!"
"And so are we, Dr. Carroll," returned Deborah, soberly, as she carefully watched the process of evaporation in the retort. "Indeed, I think that I like better knowing the things that will kill than those that will cure."
"Bloodthirsty maiden—don't you know 'tis all the same thing?—And how d'you like my plan?"