“Put this man in the guard-house,” cried the surgeon, and so passed on without smile or frown.
As to the ulcer case, to my amusement he was put in bed, and his leg locked up in a wooden splint, which effectually prevented him from touching the part diseased. It healed in ten days, and he too went as food for powder.
The surgeon asked me a few questions, and requesting to be sent for during my next fit, left me alone.
I was, of course, on my guard, and took care to have my attacks only during his absence, or to have them over before he arrived. At length, one morning, in spite of my care, he chanced to enter the ward as I fell on the floor. I was laid on the bed, apparently in strong convulsions. Presently I felt a finger on my eyelid, and as it was raised, saw the surgeon standing beside me. To escape his scrutiny I became more violent in my motions. He stopped a moment and looked at me steadily. “Poor fellow!” said he, to my great relief, as I felt at once that I had successfully deceived him. Then he turned to the ward doctor and remarked: “Take care he does not hurt his head against the bed; and, by the by, doctor, do you remember the test we applied in Carstairs’s case? Just tickle the soles of his feet and see if it will cause those backward spasms of the head.”
The aid obeyed him, and, very naturally, I jerked my head backward as hard as I could.
“That will answer,” said the surgeon, to my horror. “A clever rogue. Send him to the guard-house.”
Happy had I been had my ill luck ended here, but as I crossed the yard an officer stopped me. To my disgust, it was the captain of my old Rhode Island company.
“Hello!” said he; “keep that fellow safe. I know him.”
To cut short a long story, I was tried, convicted, and forced to refund the Rhode Island bounty, for by ill luck they found my bank-book among my papers. I was finally sent to Fort Delaware and kept at hard labor, handling and carrying shot, policing the ground, picking up cigar-stumps, and other light, unpleasant occupations.
When the war was over I was released. I went at once to Boston, where I had about four hundred dollars in bank. I spent nearly all of this sum before I could satisfy the accumulated cravings of a year and a half without drink or tobacco, or a decent meal. I was about to engage in a little business as a vender of lottery policies when I first began to feel a strange sense of lassitude, which soon increased so as quite to disable me from work of any kind. Month after month passed away, while my money lessened, and this terrible sense of weariness went on from bad to worse. At last one day, after nearly a year had elapsed, I perceived on my face a large brown patch of color, in consequence of which I went in some alarm to consult a well-known physician. He asked me a multitude of tiresome questions, and at last wrote off a prescription, which I immediately read. It was a preparation of arsenic.