"Suppose an ignorant
pretender to medical skill; may _he_ be so deceived by any stage of the
complaint, as to mistake what is only a part of the progress of the
disease, for death itself?" "No one who had ever seen death," answered he, "could mistake it in the
case of lock-jaw." Barton mused for a few minutes. "I am going to ask you a question,
perhaps still more childish; but first tell me, are not the regulations
of foreign hospitals, such as those of, let us say, Lisbon, very lax and
bungling? May not all kinds of blunders and slips occur in their entries
of names, and so forth?" Doctor Richards professed his inability to answer that query. "Well, then, doctor, here is the last of my questions. You will probably
laugh at it; but it must out nevertheless. Is there any disease, in all
the range of human maladies, which would have the effect of perceptibly
contracting the stature, and the whole frame--causing the man to shrink
in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact resemblance to
himself in every particular--with the one exception, his height and
bulk; _any_ disease, mark, no matter how rare, how little believed in,
generally, which could possibly result in producing such an effect?" The physician replied with a smile, and a very decided negative. "Tell me, then," said Barton, abruptly, "if a man be in reasonable fear
of assault from a lunatic who is at large, can he not procure a warrant
for his arrest and detention?" "Really, that is more a lawyer's question than one in my way," replied
Doctor Richards; "but I believe, on applying to a magistrate, such a
course would be directed." The physician then took his leave; but, just as he reached the
hall-door, remembered that he had left his cane upstairs, and returned. His reappearance was awkward, for a piece of paper, which he recognized
as his own prescription, was slowly burning upon the fire, and Barton
sitting close by with an expression of settled gloom and dismay. Doctor
Richards had too much tact to appear to observe what presented itself;
but he had seen quite enough to assure him that the mind, and not the
body, of Captain Barton was in reality the seat of his sufferings. A few days afterwards, the following advertisement appeared in the
Dublin newspapers:--

"If Sylvester Yelland, formerly a foremast man on board his Majesty's
frigate _Dolphin_, or his nearest of kin, will apply to Mr. Robery
Smith, solicitor, at his office, Dame Street, he or they may hear of
something greatly to his or their advantage. Admission may be had at
any hour up to twelve o'clock at night for the next fortnight, should
parties desire to avoid observation; and the strictest secrecy, as to
all communications intended to be confidential, shall be honourably
observed." The _Dolphin_, as we have mentioned, was the vessel which Captain Barton
had commanded; and this circumstance, connected with the extraordinary
exertions made by the circulation of hand-bills, etc., as well as by
repeated advertisements, to secure for this strange notice the utmost
possible publicity, suggested to Doctor Richards the idea that Captain
Barton's extreme uneasiness was somehow connected with the individual to
whom the advertisement was addressed, and he himself the author of it. This, however, it is needless to add, was no more than a conjecture. No
information whatsoever, as to the real purpose of the advertisement
itself, was divulged by the agent, nor yet any hint as to who his
employer might be. Mr. Barton, although he had latterly begun to earn for himself the
character of a hypochondriac, was yet very far from deserving it. Though by no means lively, he had yet, naturally, what are termed
"even spirits," and was not subject to continual depressions. He soon,
therefore, began to return to his former habits; and one of the earliest
symptoms of this healthier tone of spirits was his appearing at a grand
dinner of the Freemasons, of which worthy fraternity he was himself a
brother. Barton, who had been at first gloomy and abstracted, drank much
more freely than was his wont--possibly with the purpose of dispelling
his own secret anxieties--and under the influence of good wine, and
pleasant company, became gradually (unlike his usual self) talkative,
and even noisy. It was under this unwonted excitement that he left his
company at about half-past ten o'clock; and as conviviality is a strong
incentive to gallantry, it occurred to him to proceed forthwith to Lady
Rochdale's, and pass the remainder of the evening with her and his
destined bride. Accordingly, he was soon at ---- Street, and chatting gaily with the
ladies. It is not to be supposed that Captain Barton had exceeded the
limits which propriety prescribes to good fellowship; he had merely
taken enough of wine to raise his spirits, without, however, in the
least degree unsteadying his mind, or affecting his manners. With this
undue elevation of spirits had supervened an entire oblivion or contempt
of those undefined apprehensions which had for so long weighed upon his
mind, and to a certain extent estranged him from society; but as the
night wore away, and his artificial gaiety began to flag, these painful
feelings gradually intruded themselves again, and he grew abstracted and
anxious as heretofore. He took his leave at length, with an unpleasant
foreboding of some coming mischief, and with a mind haunted with a
thousand mysterious apprehensions, such as, even while he acutely felt
their pressure, he, nevertheless, inwardly strove, or affected to
contemn. It was his proud defiance of what he considered to be his own weakness
which prompted him upon this occasion to the course which brought about
the adventure which we are now about to relate. Mr. Barton might have
easily called a coach, but he was conscious that his strong inclination
to do so proceeded from no cause other than what he desperately
persisted in representing to himself to be his own superstitious
tremors. He might also have returned home by a route different from that
against which he had been warned by his mysterious correspondent; but
for the same reason he dismissed this idea also, and with a dogged and
half desperate resolution to force matters to a crisis of some kind, to
see if there were any reality in the causes of his former suffering, and
if not, satisfactorily to bring their delusiveness to the proof, he
determined to follow precisely the course which he had trodden upon the
night so painfully memorable in his own mind as that on which his
strange persecution had commenced. Though, sooth to say, the pilot who
for the first time steers his vessel under the muzzles of a hostile
battery never felt his resolution more severely tasked than did Captain
Barton, as he breathlessly pursued this solitary path; a path which,
spite of every effort of scepticism and reason, he felt to be, as
respected _him_, infested by a malignant influence.