‘Plucky old woman,’ said the doctor.

‘Will swear to anything that he chooses to say.’

‘Well, that is your affair,’ said the doctor.

‘Now,’ said Merton, ’give me a receipt for 750_l_.; we shall tell the marquis that we had to spring 250_l_. on his original offer.’

The doctor wrote out, stamped, and signed the receipt.  ’Perhaps I had better walk in front of you down stairs?’ he asked Merton.

‘Perhaps it really would be more hospitable,’ Merton acquiesced.

Merton was ushered again into Dr. Fogarty’s room on the ground floor.  Presently the other doctor reappeared, leading a bent and much muffled up figure, who preserved total silence—­for excellent reasons.  The doctor handed to Merton a sealed envelope, obviously the marquis’s will.  Merton looked closely into the face of the old marquis, whose eyes, dropping senile tears, showed no sign of recognition.

Dr. Fogarty next adjusted a silken bandage, over a wad of cotton wool, which he placed on the eyes of the prisoner.

Merton then took farewell of Dr. Melville (alias Markham); he and Dr. Fogarty supported the tottering steps of Lord Restalrig, and they led him to the gate.

‘Tell the porter to call my brougham,’ said Merton to Dr. Fogarty.

The brougham was called and came to the gate, evading a coal-cart which was about to enter the lane.  Merton aided the marquis to enter, and said ‘Home.’  A few rough fellows, who were loitering in the lane, looked curiously on.  In half an hour the marquis, his gag and the bandage round his eyes removed, was sitting in Trevor’s smoking-room, attended to by Miss Trevor.

It is probably needless to describe the simple and obvious process (rather like that of the Man, the Goose, and the Fox) by which Mrs. Lumley, with her portmanteau, left Trevor’s house that evening to pay another visit, while Merton himself arrived, in evening dress, to dinner at a quarter past eight.  He had telegraphed to Logan:  ’Entirely successful.  Come up by the 11.30 to-night, and bring Mrs. Bower.’

The marquis did not appear at dinner.  He was in bed, and, thanks to a sleeping potion, slumbered soundly.  He awoke about nine in the morning to find Mrs. Bower by his bedside.

‘Eh, marquis, finely we have jinked them,’ said Mrs. Bower; and she went on to recount the ingenious measures by which the marquis, recovering from his ‘dwawm,’ had secretly withdrawn himself.

‘I mind nothing of it, Jeanie, my woman,’ said the marquis.  ’I thought I wakened with some deevil running a knife into me; he might have gone further, and I might have fared worse.  He asked for money, but, faith, we niffered long and came to no bargain.  And a woman brought me away.  Who was the woman?’

‘Oh, dreams,’ said Mrs. Bower.  ‘Ye had another sair fit o’ the dwawming, and we brought you here to see the London doctors.  Hoo could ony mortal speerit ye away, let be it was the fairies, and me watching you a’ the time!  A fine gliff ye gie’d me when ye sat up and askit for sma’ yill’ (small beer).