at speech-making, but you're a perfect whale. I can't stand any more,' and so saying he ran out of the room.
I sat still in dismal silence for a couple of hours, and when the time came for us to partake of our frugal supper he returned and took his seat. We ate in quiet reserve; he, perhaps, unwilling to obtrude his usual table-talk on me, who might have some serious cause for grief, and I from a growing determination to keep all further manifestations of weakness to myself. What right have I, was my reflection, to bore people with my griefs; for what are those griefs to them? They may have their own, with which they do not trouble me. Their sympathy, be it ever so kind and real, will not cure what may or may not be curable. No; henceforth I will be strong, not weak. This strange and strong-minded friend of mine shall see that, as long as we remain together, I can be as firm, as strong, or as hard-hearted, if he wills it, as he is himself. So away with heart-breaking cares, and 'hence loathed melancholy'! I am Oliver Ubertus, and will not identify myself with any other man in any part of the habitable world.
The Doctor lit his pipe, and smoked for a long time in perfect silence; and I sat still, afraid to move lest I should disturb the current of his thoughts. At last, when I had become thoroughly tired of silence, he suddenly spoke, and his words alarmed me exceedingly.
'That confounded Astoragus!'
'What of him, Doctor, for Heaven's sake? Has he escaped? Has he become a flea?' I asked with bated breath.
'He has not escaped, Ubertus, and you are safe so far; but he has made me guilty of an act of cruelty which my very soul abhors.'
'Gracious powers! You surely have not boiled him in serpents' poison and rackarock, have you, Doctor?'
'Well, no, not exactly, although the Demon ordered me
