In another moment they were at the doctor's door. Baldred tapped against it, and the summons was instantly answered by a diminutive personage, clad in a jerkin of coarse grey serge, and having a leathern apron tied round his waist. This was Flapdragon.
Blear-eyed, smoke-begrimed, lantern-jawed, the poor dwarf seemed as if his whole life had been spent over the furnace. And so, in fact, it had been. He had become little better than a pair of human bellows. In his hand he held the halberd with which Auriol had been wounded.
"So you have been playing the leech, Flapdragon, eh?" cried Baldred.
"Ay, marry have I," replied the dwarf, with a wild grin, and displaying a wolfish set of teeth. "My master ordered me to smear the halberd with the sympathetic ointment. I obeyed him: rubbed the steel point, first on one side, then on the other; next wiped it; and then smeared it again."
"Whereby you put the patient to exquisite pain," replied Baldred; "but help me to transport him to the laboratory."
"I know not if the doctor will care to be disturbed," said Flapdragon. "He is busily engaged on a grand operation."
"I will take the risk on myself," said Baldred. "The youth will die if he remains here. See, he has fainted already!"
Thus urged, the dwarf laid down the halberd, and between the two, Auriol was speedily conveyed up a wide oaken staircase to the laboratory. Doctor Lamb was plying the bellows at the furnace, on which a large alembic was placed, and he was so engrossed by his task that he scarcely noticed the entrance of the others.
"Place the youth on the ground, and rear his head against the chair," he cried, hastily, to the dwarf. "Bathe his brows with the decoction in that crucible. I will attend to him anon. Come to me on the morrow, Baldred, and I will repay thee for thy trouble. I am busy now."
"These relics, doctor," cried the gatekeeper, glancing at the bag, which was lying on the ground, and from which a bald head protruded—"I ought to take them back with me."