anguish, he sank back again.

"I have not touched you, sir," replied Baldred. "I brought you here to succour you. You will be easier anon. Doctor Lamb must have wiped the halberd," he added to himself.

Another sudden change. The pain fled from the sufferer's countenance, and he became easy as before.

"What have you done to me?" he asked, with a look of gratitude; "the torture of my wound has suddenly ceased, and I feel as if a balm had been dropped into it. Let me remain in this state if you have any pity—or despatch me, for my late agony was almost insupportable."

"You are cared for by one who has greater skill than any chirurgeon in London," replied Baldred. "If I can manage to transport you to his lodgings, he will speedily heal your wounds."

"Do not delay, then," replied Auriol faintly; "for though I am free from pain, I feel that my life is ebbing fast away."

"Press this handkerchief to your side, and lean on me," said Baldred. "Doctor Lamb's dwelling is but a step from the gateway—in fact, the first house on the bridge. By the way, the doctor declares he is your kinsman."

"It is the first I ever heard of him," replied Auriol faintly; "but take me to him quickly, or it will be too late."

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."

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