myself here to that part of the inquiry which immediately refers to
Hilda Wade's history.

"If I were you," she said to the Professor one morning, when he was most
astonished at his contradictory results, "I would test it on a hawk.
If I dare venture on a suggestion, I believe you will find that hawks
recover."

"The deuce they do!" Sebastian cried. However, he had such confidence
in Nurse Wade's judgment that he bought a couple of hawks and tried
the treatment on them. Both birds took considerable doses, and, after a
period of insensibility extending to several hours, woke up in the end
quite bright and lively.

"I see your principle," the Professor broke out. "It depends upon
diet. Carnivores and birds of prey can take lethodyne with impunity;
herbivores and fruit-eaters cannot recover, and die of it. Man,
therefore, being partly carnivorous, will doubtless be able more or less
to stand it."

Hilda Wade smiled her sphinx-like smile. "Not quite that, I fancy," she
answered. "It will kill cats, I feel sure; at least, most domesticated
ones. But it will NOT kill weasels. Yet both are carnivores."

"That young woman knows too much!" Sebastian muttered to me, looking
after her as she glided noiselessly with her gentle tread down the long
white corridor. "We shall have to suppress her, Cumberledge.... But I'll
wager my life she's right, for all that. I wonder, now, how the dickens
she guessed it!"