“ ‘Medical man!’ I returned; ‘I have no medical man. What do you mean? I never was better in my life.’
“ ‘I mean that there was no old lady. It was an illusion, and that indicates something wrong. Besides, you did not know me when I spoke to you.’
“ ‘That is nothing,’ I returned. ‘I had just taken off my spectacles, and without them I shouldn’t know my own father.’
“ ‘How was it you saw the old lady, then?’
“The affair was growing serious under my friend’s cross-questioning. I did not at all like the idea of his supposing me subject to hallucinations. So I answered, with a laugh, ‘Ah! to be sure, that explains it. I am so blind without my spectacles, that I shouldn’t know an old lady from a big dog.’
“ ‘There was no big dog,’ said Hetheridge, shaking his head, as the fact for the first time dawned upon me that, although I had seen the old lady clearly enough to make a sketch of her, even to the features of her