It went deeper.
Number Fourteen's ailment was a rare and peculiar one, into which I need not enter here with professional precision.

(I have described the case fully for my brother practitioners in my paper in the fourth volume of Sebastian's Medical Miscellanies.) It will be enough for my present purpose to say, in brief, that the lesion consisted of an internal growth which is always dangerous and most often fatal, but which nevertheless is of such a character that, if it be once happily eradicated by supremely good surgery, it never tends to recur, and leaves the patient as strong and well as ever.

Sebastian was, of course, delighted with the splendid opportunity thus afforded him.

"It is a beautiful case!" he cried, with professional enthusiasm.

"Beautiful! Beautiful! I never saw one so deadly or so malignant before.