CHAPTER XXVII.
THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony from "a bad burn." Those were the words.

For in phlogistic as in other things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers.
His housekeeper applied some old women's remedy mild as milk.

He submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case of this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once.

He made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to him, meditated instant flight from the township.
Alas! it was his unlucky day.

His sincere desire and honest endeavour to perjure himself were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen nor indeed thought possible.
He had spoken the truth.
And IN AN AFFIDAVIT! The officers, on reaching "The Silver Lion", found the birds were flown.
They went down to the river, and from intelligence they received there, started up the bank in hot pursuit.
This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and observation.