"Though I'm not a priest, I can lock myself up as tight
as anny. There's no tongue that's so tied, when tying's needed, as the
one that babbles most bewhiles. Babbling covers a lot of secrets."
"So you t'ink it better Meydon should die, as Hadley is away and Brydon
is sick-hein?"
"Oh, I think--"
Finden stopped short, for a horse's hoofs sounded on the turf beside the
house, and presently Varley, the great London surgeon, rounded the corner
and stopped his horse in front of the veranda.
He lifted his hat to the priest. "I hear there's a bad case at the
hospital," he said.
"It is ver' dangerous," answered Father Bourassa; "but, voila, come in!
There is something cool to drink. Ah yes, he is ver' bad, that man from
the Great Slave Lake."
Inside the house, with the cooling drinks, Varley pressed his questions,
and presently, much interested, told at some length of singular cases
which had passed through his hands--one a man with his neck broken, who
had lived for six months afterward.
"Broken as a man's neck is broken by hanging--dislocation, really--the
disjointing of the medulla oblongata, if you don't mind technicalities,"
he said.
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