One never knows who is spying about in the daytime." He looked at his watch, and then went to a cupboard, where there were bundles of wood and matches and old newspapers,--for it was his habit to light his own fire occasionally when he worked unusually late at night or early in the morning.

He relighted his fire now as cleverly as any housemaid in Bloomsbury, and stood watching it till it burned briskly.

Then he lit a taper, and went downstairs to the professional torture-chamber.

The tall horsehair chair looked unutterably awful in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person could almost have fancied it occupied by the ghost of some patient who had expired under the agony of the forceps.

Mr.
Sheldon lighted the gas in a movable branch which he was in the habit of turning almost into the mouths of the patients who consulted him at night.