CHAPTER LIX.
TELLING HOW A COACH DREW UP AT THE ELMS, AND TWO FINE LADIES, DRESSED FOR THE BALL, STEPPED IN.
It was now more than a fortnight since Sturk's mishap in the Butcher's Wood, and he was still alive, but still under the spell of coma.

He was sinking, but very slowly; yet it was enough to indicate the finality of that 'life in death.' Dangerfield once or twice attacked Toole rather tartly about Sturk's case.
'Can nothing be done to make him speak?
Five minutes' consciousness would unravel the mystery.' Then Toole would shrug, and say, 'Pooh--pooh! my dear Sir, you know nothing.' 'Why, there's _life_!' 'Ay, the mechanical functions of life, but the brain's over-powered,' replied Toole, with a wise frown.
'Well, relieve it.' 'By Jupiter, Sir, you make me laugh,' cried Toole with a grin, throwing up his eyebrows.

'I take it, you think we doctors can work miracles.' 'Quite the reverse, Sir,' retorted Dangerfield, with a cold scoff.

'But you say he may possibly live six weeks more; and all that time the wick is smouldering, though the candle's short--can't you blow it in, and give us even one minute's light ?' 'Ay, a smouldering wick and a candle if you please; but enclosed in a glass bottle, how the deuce _are_ you to blow it ?' 'Pish!' said the silver spectacles, with an icy flash from his glasses.
'Why, Sir, you'll excuse me--but you don't understand,' said Toole, a little loftily.

'There are two contused wounds along the scalp as long as that pencil--the whole line of each partially depressed, the depression all along being deep enough to lay your finger in.