Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3)

All eyes were now rivetted to the spot. The women cried in an under key to Master George, who roared. “Hush, hush, my dear,” said the Doctor, “you don’t know what’s good for you, my little innocent!” whilst he applied the forceps, to strip off the skin like a surtout. The skin was tight, and would not come away cleverly with the first tug, as the doctor had expected; nor did any thing white appear, though a sufficiency of red blood manifested itself.

The doctor was greatly surprised. “I see,” said he, “it is somewhat deeper than we had conceived. We have not got deep enough.” Another gash on each side; but the second gash had no better success. Doctor Bathron seemed desperate; but conceiving that in so young a subject one short cut – be it ever so deep – could do no harm, his hand shook, and he gave the scalpel its full force, till he found it touch the bone. The experiment was now complete; he opened the wound, and starting back, affected to be struck with horror, threw down his knife, stamped and swore the child was in fact either the devil or a lusus Naturæ, for that he could see the very bone, and the child was actually coal-black to the bone, and the bone black also, and that he would not have taken a thousand guineas to have given a single gash to a thing which was clearly supernatural – actually dyed in grain. He appeared distracted; however, the child’s arm was bound up, a good poultice put over it, the blister hastily removed from the other arm, and the young gentleman, fortunately for Doctor Bathron, recovered from the scarification, and lived with an old dry-nurse for four or five years. He was then killed by a cow of his father’s horning him, and died with the full reputation of having been a devil in reality, which was fully corroborated by a white sister of his, and his mother, (as I heard,) departing about the very same time, if not on the next day. It was said he took their souls away with him, to make his peace with his master for staying so long.

Doctor George Bathron, who was the pleasantest united grocer and surgeon in the county, at length found it the best policy to tell this story himself, and by that means neutralise the ridicule of it. He often told it to me, whilst in company with Mr. Palmer; and by hearing both versions, I obtained full information about the circumstance, which I relate as a very striking example of the mode in which we managed a lusus Naturæ when we caught one in Ireland five and forty years ago.

THE FARRIER AND WHIPPER-IN

Tom White, the whipper-in of Blandsfort – An unlucky leap – Its consequences – Tom given over by the Faculty– Handed to the farrier – Larry Butler’s preparations – New way to stand fast– The actual cautery – Ingredients of a “charge” – Tom cured intirely.

Tom White, a whipper-in at my father’s at Blandsfort, had his back crushed by leaping his horse into a gravel pit, to pull off the scut of a hare. The horse broke his neck, the hare was killed, and the whipper-in, to all appearance, little better; and when we rode up, there lay three carcases “all in a row.” However (as deaths generally confer an advantage upon some survivor), two of the corpses afforded good cheer next day: – we ate the hare, the hounds ate the horse, and the worms would certainly have made a meal of Tom White, had not old Butler, the farrier, taken his cure in hand, after Doctor Ned Stapleton, of Maryborough, the genuine bone-setter of that county, had given him up as broken-backed and past all skill. As has been already seen, our practice of pharmacy, medicine, and surgery in Ireland, fifty years ago, did not correspond with modern usages; and though our old operations might have had a trifle more of torture in them – either from bluntness of knives or the mode of slashing a patient; yet, in the end, I conceive that few more lives are saved by hacking, hewing, and thrusting, scientifically, according to modern practice, than there were by the old trooper-like fashion.

I was in Blandsfort House when Mr. Jemmy Butler, our hereditary farrier, who had equal skill – according to the old school – in the treatment of dogs, cows, and horses, as well as in rat-catching, began and concluded his medico-surgical cure of Tom White: I can therefore recount with tolerable fidelity the successful course adopted toward that courageous sportsman.

Tom’s first state of insensibility soon gave way; and incontrovertible proofs of his existence followed, in sundry deep groans, and now and then a roaring asseveration that his back was broke. He entreated us to send off for his clergy without any delay, or the reverend father would not find him in this world. However, Mr. Butler, who had no great belief in any world either above or below the Queen’s County, declared, “that if the clergy came, he’d leave Tom White to die, as he well knew Tom was a thief; and if any clergy botheration was made about his sowl, it would only tend to irritate and inflame his hurt.” But he undertook to give him a better greasing than all the priests in the barony, if they should be seven years anointing him with the best salvation oil ever invented.

Tom acquiesced; and, in fear of death, acknowledged “he was a great thief, sure enough, but if he recovered, he would take up, and tell all he had done, without a word of a lie, to Father Cahill of Stradbally, who was always a friend to the poor sarvants.”

Mr. Butler now commenced his cure, at the performance of which, every male in the house, high and low, was called on to be present. The farrier first stripped Tom to his shirt, and then placed him flat on the great kitchen table, with his face downward; and having (after being impeded by much roaring and kicking) tied a limb fast to each leg of it – (so as to make a St. Andrew’s cross of him) he drew a strong table-cloth over the lower part of the sufferer’s body; and tying the corners underneath the table, had the pleasure of seeing Tom White as snug and fast as he could wish, to undergo any degree of torture without being able to shift a quarter of an inch.

Mr. Butler then walked round in a sort of triumph, every now and then giving the knots a pull, to tighten them, and saying, “Mighty well, – mighty good! Now stand fast, Tom.”

Tom’s back being thus duly bared, the doctor ran his immense thumb from top to bottom along the spine, with no slight degree of pressure; and whenever the whipper-in roared loudest, Mr. Butler marked the spot he was touching with a lump of chalk. Having, in that way, ascertained the tender parts, he pressed them with all his force, as if he were kneading dough – just, as he said, to settle the joints quite even. No bull in the midst of five or six bull-dogs tearing him piecemeal could, even in his greatest agonies, amuse the baiters better, or divert them with more tremendous roars, than the whipper-in did during the greatest part of this operation.

The operator, having concluded his reconnoitring, proceeded to real action. He drew parallel lines with chalk down Tom’s back – one on each side the back-bone; at particular points he made a cross stroke, and at the tender parts a double one; so that Tom had a complete ladder delineated on his back, as if the doctor intended that something should mount by it from his waistband to his cravat.

The preliminaries being thus gone through, and Mr. Butler furnished with a couple of red-hot irons, such as maimed horses are fired with, he began, in a most deliberate and skilful manner, to fire Tom according to the rules and practice of the ars veterinaria. The poor fellow’s bellowing, while under the actual cautery, all the people said, they verily believed was the loudest ever heard in that country since the massacre of Mullymart.⁶ This part of the operation, indeed, was by no means superficially performed, as Mr. Butler mended the lines and made them all of a uniform depth and colour, much as the writing-master mends the letters and strokes in a child’s copy-book: and as they were very straight and regular, and too well broiled, to suffer any effusion of red blood, Tom’s back did not look much the worse for the tattooing. In truth, if my readers recollect the excellent mode of making a cut down each side of a saddle of mutton, just to elicit the brown gravy, they will have a good idea of the longitudinal cauteries in question. On three or four of the tender places before mentioned Mr. Butler drew his transverse cross bars, which quite took off the uniform appearance, and gave a sort of garnished look to the whole drawing, which seemed very much to gratify the operator, who again walked round and round the body several times with a red-hot iron in his hand, surveying, and here and there retouching the ragged or uneven parts. This finishing rendered the whipper-in rather hoarse, and his first roars were now changed to softer notes – somewhat as an opera singer occasionally breaks into his falsetto.

“Howld your bother,” said Mr. Butler, to whom Tom’s incessant shrieking had become very disagreeable: “howld your music, I say, or I’ll put a touch⁷ on your nose as tight as yourself did on Brown Jack, when I was firing the ring-bone out of him: you’re a greater beast yourself nor ever Brown Jack was.”

Mr. Butler having partly silenced the whipper-in through fear of the touch, the second part of the process was undertaken – namely, depositing what is termed by farriers the cold charge, on the back of Tom White. However, on this occasion the regular practice was somewhat varied, and the cold charge was nearly boiling hot when placed upon the raw ladder on the whipper-in’s back. I saw the torture boiled in a large iron ladle, and will mention the ingredients, just to show that they were rather more exciting than our milk-and-water charges of the present day: – viz. Burgundy pitch, black pitch, diaculum, yellow wax, white wax, mustard, black resin, white resin, sal ammoniac, bruised hemlock, camphor, Spanish flies, and oil of origanum, boiled up with spirits of turpentine, onion juice, and a glass of whisky; it was kept simmering till it became of a proper consistence for application, and was then laid on with a painter’s brush, in the same way they calk a pleasure-boat. Four coats of this savoury substance did the farrier successively apply, each one as the former began to cool. But, on the first application, even the dread of the touch could not restrain Tom White’s vociferation. After this had settled itself in the chinks, he seemed to be quite stupid, and tired of roaring, and lay completely passive, or rather insensible, while Mr. Butler finished to his taste; dotting it over with short lamb’s-wool as thick as it would stick, and then another coat of the unction, with an addition of wool; so that, when completed by several layers of charge and lamb’s-wool, Tom’s back might very well have been mistaken for a saddle of Southdown before it was skinned. A thin ash board was now neatly fitted to it down Tom’s spine by the carpenter, and made fast with a few short nails driven into the charge. I believe none of them touched the quick, as the charge appeared above an inch and a half thick, and it was only at the blows of the hammer that the patient seemed to feel extra sensibility. Tom was now untied and helped to rise: his woolly carcase was bandaged all round with long strips of a blanket, which being done, the operation was declared to be completed, in less than three quarters of an hour.

The other servants now began to make merry with Tom White. One asked him, how he liked purgatory? – another, if he’d “stop thieving,” after that judgment on him? – a third, what more could Father Cahill do for him? Doctor Butler said but little: he assumed great gravity, and directed “that the whipper-in should sit up stiff for seven days and nights, by which time the juices would be dried on him; after that he might lay down, if he could.”

This indeed was a very useless permission, as the patient’s tortures were now only in their infancy. So soon as the charge got cold and stiff in the nitches and fancy figures upon his back, he nearly went mad; so that for a few days they were obliged to strap him with girths to the head of his bed to make him “stay easy;” and sometimes to gag him, that his roars might not disturb the company in the dining parlour. Wallace the piper said that Tom’s roarings put him quite out: and an elderly gentleman who was on a visit with us, and who had not been long married to a young wife, said his bride was so shocked and alarmed at the groans and “pullaloes” of Tom White, that she could think of nothing else.

When the poor fellow’s pains had altogether subsided, and the swathing was off, he cut one of the most curious figures ever seen: he looked as if he had a stake driven through his body; and it was not till the end of four months that Mr. Butler began to pour sweet oil down his neck, between his back and the charge, which he continued to do daily for about another month, till the charge gradually detached itself, and broken-backed Tom was declared cured: in truth, I believe he never felt any inconvenience from his fall afterward.

This mode of cauterising the people was then much practised by the old farriers, often with success; and I never recollect any fatal effects happening in consequence.

The farriers’ rowelling also was sometimes had recourse to, to prevent swellings from coming to a head: and I only heard of two fatalities arising herefrom; one, in the case of a half-mounted gentleman at Castle Comber, who died of a locked jaw; and another, in that of a shopkeeper at Borris, in Ossory, who expired from mortification occasioned by a tow and turpentine rowell being used to carry off an inflammation.

THE RIVAL PRACTITIONERS

Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Mulhall, and the author’s father – Interesting particulars of a medical consultation – Family recollections – Counsellor, afterward Judge Fletcher – First meeting between him and the author – Catching a Tartar – Sam Doxy of the Derrys – Breaks his neck in riding to a Turnpike-Board dinner – Pronounced dead by Mr. Knaggs, the apothecary – That eminent practitioner’s judgment disputed by Lieut. Jerry Palmer – The apothecary proceeds to show that the patient must, or at least ought to be, dead – An incision, and its consequences – Lieut. Palmer’s successful mode of treatment – Recovery of the corpse.

In addition to my preceding illustrations of the former state of medicine and surgery in Ireland, I cannot omit a couple of convincing proofs of the intuitive knowledge possessed by Irish practitioners in my early days. They present scenes at which I was myself present, and one of which was the most distressing I had witnessed, while the other was more amusing at its conclusion than any operation I ever saw performed by any, either of the farriers or colloughs of Ireland.

Doctor Knaggs, the hero of the second incident, was a tall, raw-boned, rough, dirty apothecary; but he suited the neighbours, as they said he had “the skill in him,” and was “mighty successful.” Sam Doxy, his patient, was, on the contrary, a broad, strong, plethoric, half-mounted gentleman. He had his lodge, as he called it, in the midst of a derry (a bog), drank his gallon of hot punch to keep out the damp, and devoured numerous cock turkeys, and cows that were past child-bearing, to keep down the potsheen. Every neighbour that could get to him was welcome, and the road was seldom in a fit state to permit their going away again quickly.

The first of these anecdotes I still relate with some pain, though forty-five years and more have of course blunted the feeling I experienced on its occurrence; and as I shall soon be in the same situation myself as the parties now are, I can, comparatively speaking, look lightly on an event which, in youth, health, and high blood, was quite chilling to my contemplation.

The father of the late Judge Fletcher of the Common Pleas was an actual physician at Mount Melec, about seven miles from my father’s. He was a smart, intelligent, and very humorous, but remarkably diminutive doctor. He attended my father in his last moments, in conjunction with the family practitioner, Doctor Dennis Mulhall, whose appearance exactly corresponded with that of Doctor Slop, save that his paunch was doubly capacious, and his legs, in true symmetry with his carcase, helped to waddle him into a room. He was a matter-of-fact doctor, and despised anatomy. His features had been so confused and entangled together by that unbeautifying disorder, the smallpox, (which I have so often alluded to,) that it almost required a chart to find their respective stations.

These two learned gentlemen attended my poor father with the greatest assiduity, and daily prescribed for him a certain portion of every drug the Stradbally apothecary could supply: but these were not very numerous; and as every thing loses its vigour by age, so the Stradbally drugs, having been some years waiting for customers (like the landlord of the Red Cow in “John Bull”), of course fell off in their efficacy, till at length they each became, what the two doctors ultimately turned my poor father into – a caput mortuum. Notwithstanding the drugs and the doctors, indeed, my father held out nearly ten days; but finally, as a matter of course, departed this world. I was deeply and sincerely grieved. I loved him affectionately, and never after could reconcile myself to either of his medical attendants. I had overheard their last consultation, and from that time to this, am of opinion, that one doctor is as good as, if not better than, five hundred. I shall never forget the dialogue. After discussing the weather and prevalence of diseases in the county, they began to consult. – “What do you say to the pulveres Jacobi?” said Dr. Mulhall (the family physician).

“We are three days too late,” smirked Doctor Fletcher.

“What think you then of cataplasmus, or the flies? – Eh! Doctor, eh! the flies?” said Mulhall.

“The flies won’t rise in time,” replied Doctor Fletcher: – “too late again!”

“I fear so,” said Mulhall.

“’Tis a pity, Doctor Mulhall, you did not suggest blistering breast and spine sooner: you know it was not my business, as I was only called in: – I could not duly suggest.”

“Why,” replied Doctor Mulhall, “I thought of it certainly, but I was unwilling to alarm the family by so definitive an application, unless in extremis.”

“We’re in extremis now,” said Doctor Fletcher – “he! he!”

“Very true – very true,” rejoined Doctor Mulhall; “but Nature is too strong for art; she takes her way in spite of us!”

“Unless, like a wife, she’s kept down at first,” said Fletcher – “he! he! he!”

“Perhaps I was rather too discreet and delicate, doctor; but if the colonel can still get down the pulveres Jacobi– ” said Mulhall.

“He can’t!” said Fletcher.

“Then we can do no more for the patient,” replied Mulhall.

“Nothing more,” said Fletcher; “so you had better break your ‘give-over’ to the family as tenderly as possible. That’s your business, you know: there is no use in my staying.” And so, as the sun rose, Doctor Fletcher jumped into his little cabriolet, and I heard him say in parting, “This is no jest, I fear, to his family.”

The next day I lost my father; and never did grief show itself more strong, or general, than on that mournful occasion. There was not a dry eye amongst his tenantry. My mother was distracted: for more than thirty years that they had been united, a single difference of opinion was never expressed between them. His sons loved him as a brother; and the attachment was mutual. His person was prepossessing – his manners those of a man of rank – his feelings such as became a man of honour. He had the mien of a gentleman, and the heart of a philanthropist; but he was careless of his concerns, and had too rustic an education. He left large landed estates, with large incumbrances to overwhelm them; and thirteen children survived to lament his departure.

After I was called to the bar, Counsellor Fletcher, the doctor’s son (already mentioned in a former Vol.), was in the best of practice. On my first circuit, I did not know him, and of course wished to make acquaintance with my seniors. Lord Norbury went circuit as judge at the same time I went first as barrister; he therefore can be no juvenile at this time of day.

Fletcher was, as has already been mentioned, of very uncertain humour, and when not pleased, extremely repulsive. The first day I was on circuit he came into the bar-room, perhaps tired, or – what was far worse to him – hungry, for nothing ruffled Fletcher so much as waiting for dinner. Wishing to lose no time in making acquaintance with any countryman and brother barrister, and supposing he was endowed with the same degree of urbanity as other people, I addressed him in my own civil, but perhaps over-vivacious manner. He looked gruff, and answered my first question by some monosyllable. I renewed my address with one of the standing interrogatories resorted to by a man who wishes to fall into conversation. – Another monosyllable.

I was touched: – “You don’t know me, perhaps, Counsellor Fletcher?” said I.

“Not as yet, sir,” said Fletcher.

I was angry: – “Then I’ll refresh your memory,” said I. “Your father killed mine.”

The barristers present laughed aloud.

“I hope you don’t mean to revenge the circumstance on me, sir?” said Fletcher, with a sardonic smile.

“That,” said I, “depends entirely on your making me an apology for your father’s ignorance. I forgive your own.”

He seemed surprised at the person he had to deal with, but no increase of ire was apparent. He looked, however, rather at a loss. The laugh was now entirely against him, when Warden Flood (my predecessor in the Admiralty), who was then father of the circuit bar, happened to come in, and formally introduced me as a new member.

After that time Fletcher and I grew very intimate: – he had several good qualities, and these induced me to put up with many of his humours. He was a very clever man, possessing good legal information; had a clear and independent mind, and never truckled to any one because he was great. He often wrangled, but never quarrelled with me, and I believe I was one of the few who maintained a sincere regard for him. He was intimate with Judge Moore, who now sits in his place, and was the most familiar friend I had at Temple. I have alluded to Judge Fletcher incidentally, as a public character who could not be bribed to support the Union, and was appointed a judge by the Duke of Bedford during his short viceroyalty.

I have introduced Doctor Fletcher’s medical practice in my glance at the Irish faculty, the more particularly, because I was present at another consultation held with him, which was (as I hinted at the commencement of this sketch) connected with as droll an incident as any could be, little short of terminating fatally.

I rode with Mr. Flood, of Roundwood, to the meeting of a turnpike-board, held at Mount Rath, a few miles from my father’s house. One of the half-mounted gentlemen already described, Sam Doxy of the Derrys, being on his way to the same meeting, just at the entrance of the town his horse stumbled over a heap of earth, and, rolling over and over (like the somerset of a rope-dancer), broke the neck of his rider. The body was immediately – as usual when country gentlemen were slain in fox-hunting, riding home drunk at nights, or the like – brought on a door, and laid upon a bed spread on the floor at the next inn. Mr. Knaggs, the universal prescriber, &c. for the town and vicinity, was sent for to inspect the corpse, and Doctor Fletcher being also by chance in the place, was called into the room to consult as to the dead man, and vouch that the breath was out of the body of Mr. Samuel Doxy of the Derrys.

The two practitioners found he had no pulse, not even a single thump in his arteries (as Doctor Knaggs emphatically expressed it). They therefore both shook their heads. His hands being felt, were found to be cold. They shook their heads again. The doctors now retired to the window, and gravely consulted: first, as to the danger of stumbling horses; and second, as to the probability of the deceased having been sober. They then walked back, and both declared it was “all over” with Mr. Doxy of the Derrys. His neck was broken – otherwise dislocated; his marrow-bones (according to Dr. Knaggs) were disjointed; and his death had of course been instantaneous. On this decisive opinion being promulgated to the turnpike-board, Dr. Fletcher mounted his pony, and left the town, to cure some other patient.

The coroner, Mr. Calcut, was sent for to hold his inquest before Sam’s body could be “forwarded” home to the Derrys; and Mr. Knaggs, the apothecary, remained in the room, to see if any fee might be stirring when his relations should come to carry away the dead carcase; when, all of a sudden, an exclamation of “by J – s!” burst forth from Mr. Jerry Palmer (already mentioned) of Dureen, near Castle Durrow, an intimate acquaintance of Sam Doxy: “I don’t think he’s dead at all: – my father often made him twice deader at Dureen, with Dan Brennan’s double-proof, and he was as well and hearty again as any dunghill cock early in the morning.”

“Not dead!” said Knaggs with surprise and anger. “Is not dead, you say? – Lieutenant Jer Palmer, you don’t mean to disparage my skill, or injure my business in the town, I hope? There is no more life left in Sam Doxy than in the leg of that table.”

The lieutenant bristled up at the doctor’s contradiction. “I don’t care a d – n, Pothecary Knaggs, either for your skill, your business, or yourself; but I say Sam Doxy is not dead, and I repeat that I have seen him twice as dead at Dureen, and likewise, by the same token, on the day Squire Pool’s tenants of Ballyfair had a great dinner in Andrew Harlem’s big room at Maryborough.”

“Pothecary Knaggs” was now much chagrined. “Did you ever hear the like, gentlemen of the turnpike-board?” said he. “Is it because the lieutenant was in the American wars that he thinks he knows a corpse as well as I do?”

“No I don’t do that same,” said Palmer: “for they say here that you have made as many dead bodies yourself as would serve for a couple of battles, and a few skirmishes into the bargain. But I say Sam is not dead, by J – s!”

“Well now, gentlemen,” said Knaggs, appealing to public candour from the rough treatment of the lieutenant, “you shall soon see, gentlemen, with all your eyes that I am no ignoramus, as the lieutenant seems to say.” Then opening his case of instruments and strapping a large operation knife on the palm of his fist, “now, gentlemen of the turnpike-board,” pursued he, “I’ll convince you all that Sam Doxy is as dead as Ballaghlanagh.⁸ Its a burning shame for you, Lieutenant Jer Palmer, to be after running down a well-known practitioner in this manner, in his own town. Gentlemen, look here, now, I’ll show you that Sam is dead. Living, indeed! Oh, that’s a fine story!”

We all conceived that Doctor Knaggs only intended to try to bleed him; and with this impression flocked round the body. Doctor Knaggs turned the corpse on one side, took off the cravat, and the neck appeared to have somewhat of a bluish look on one side. “Now, gentlemen,” said he, “here’s the spot (pressing it with his finger): the spinal marrow is injured, perhaps in more places than one, or two either; the bones are dislocated, and the gristle between them is knocked out of its place. The formation of a gentleman’s neck is just the same as that of a horse’s tail; and as most of you have either yourselves docked and nicked, or been present at the docking and nicking of the tail of a hunter, you’ll understand precisely the structure of Sam Doxy’s vertebre. Now, gentlemen, (all this time placing Sam’s head in a convenient position to make an incision, or, had the coroner been present, to cut the head off, for clearer demonstration,) see, now, I’ll just make a slight longitudinal gash along the back joints of the neck, and by withdrawing the skin and the covering of fat on either side, I’ll show as clear as his nose the fatal fracture of the spinal cord.”

Every person in company now began instinctively to feel the nape of his own neck for the spinal cord which the doctor was speaking of. “No man,” resumed Doctor Knaggs, “ever recovered when this cord was fairly cracked, and that’s the real secret of hanging, I assure you; and it has been remarked that no culprit at Maryborough has ever given a kick after he was duly strung and the shelf fell, for these three last years, since I humanely taught the hangman the proper way. The jerk is the thing, gentlemen; and whether the spine is broken by its being pulled up from a man’s shoulders by a cord, or thrust down into his shoulders by a fall on the head, makes no sort of difference. Not dead!” resumed he, with a sneer at the lieutenant: “Gentlemen, (every body came close) now, you see, the gristle which we call cartilage lies between those two bones, and the cord runs over and within also: – when cut through, then, the head, gentlemen, having no support, bobs forward, and the dislocation will appear quite plain. See, now,” and as he spoke he gave a pretty smart gash from the nape of Sam’s neck downward toward his shoulders; and proceeding to draw back the skin and fat on each side, to get a view of the bones, to the surprise of the turnpike-board, the amazement of Doctor Knaggs himself, and the triumph of Lieutenant Jer Palmer, a stream of warm red blood instantly issued from the gash, and a motion appeared in one eyelid of the corpse.

“By J – s!” shouted the lieutenant, “I told you the man was not dead – not a taste of it. Oh! you diabolical pothecary, if you attempt to give another slash, I’ll cut your own wezand; and if the poor follow dies now, of this cutting, which I think he may, I’ll prosecute you for the murder of Sam Doxy of the Derrys – a fair honest man, and a friend of my father’s!”

Doctor Knaggs stood petrified and motionless.