wasn’t such a thing as a soul, of course—­it was a manifestation of a combination of Toxins (or anti-Toxins, I forget which); there was no God—­the idea of God was the result of another combination of Toxins, akin to a belief in the former illusion.  Roughly speaking, I think his general position was that as Toxins are a secretion of microbes (I am certain of that phrase, anyhow), so thought and spiritual experiences and so forth are a secretion of the brain.  I know it sounded all very brilliant and unanswerable and analogous to other things.  He hardly ever took the trouble to say all this; he was far too much interested in what he already knew, or was just on the point of finding out, to treat of these extravagant and complicated ramifications of his subject.  When he really got to know his mice and bats, as they deserved to be known, it might be possible to turn his attention to other things.  Meanwhile, it was foolish and uneconomical.  So here he lived, with a man-of-all-work and his man’s wife, and daily went from strength to strength in the knowledge of Toxins.

* * * * *

It was to this household that there approached, in the month of October, a small and dismal procession of three.

The doctor was first roused to a sense of what was happening as he shuffled swiftly through his little powder-closet one morning soon after breakfast, bearing in his hand the corpse of a mouse which had at last, and most disappointingly, succumbed to a severe attack of some hybrid of leprosy.  As he flew through to his microscope he became aware of an altercation in the stable-yard beneath.

“I tell you he ain’t a proper doctor,” he heard his man explaining; “he knows nothing about them things.”

“My good fellow,” began a high, superior voice out of sight; but Dr. Whitty swept on, and was presently deep in indescribable disgustingness of the highest possible value to the human race, especially in the South Seas.  Time meant nothing at all to him, when this kind of work was in hand; and it was after what might be an hour or two hours, or ten minutes, that he heard a tap on his door.

He uttered a sound without moving his eye, and the door opened.

“Very sorry, sir,” said his man, “but there’s a party in the yard as won’t—­”

The doctor held up his hand for silence, gazed a few moments longer, poked some dreadful little object two or three times, sighed and sat back.

“Eh?”

“There’s a party in the yard, sir, wants a doctor.”

(This sort of thing had happened before.)

“Tell them to be off,” he said sharply.  He was not an unkindly man, but this sort of thing was impossible.  “Tell them to go to Dr. Foster.”

“I ’ave, sir,” said the man.

“Tell them again,” said the doctor.

“I ’ave, sir.  ’Arf a dozen times.”

The doctor sighed—­he was paying practically no attention at all, of course.  The leprous mouse had been discouraging; that was all.