He turned back to the group, silent now that their high spirits were damped. “Gentlemen, I am sorry to miss both the discussion and the companionship, but work calls.” He moved to Pole’s side. “Let us go. The last of the light is gone but the moon should be up. We will manage well without a lantern. If Death will not wait, then nor must we.”

The road that led to Bailey’s Farm was flanked by twin lines of hedgerow. It had been an early spring, and the moonlit white of flowering hawthorn set parallel lines to mark the road ahead. The two men walked side by side, Darwin glancing across from time to time at the other’s gloomy profile.

“You appear to have no great regard for the medical profession,” he said at last. “Though you bear marks of illness yourself.”

Jacob Pole shrugged his shoulders and did not speak.

“But yet you are a friend of Dr. Monkton?” continued Darwin.

Pole turned a frowning face toward him. “I most certainly am not. As I told you, I am no more than a messenger for him, one who happened to be at the farm.” He hesitated. “If you press the point—as you seem determined to do—I will admit that I am no friend to any doctor. Men put more blind faith in witless surgeons than they do in the Lord Himself.”

“And with more reason,” said Darwin softly.

Pole did not seem to hear. “Blind faith,” he went on. “And against all logic. When you pay a man money to cut off your arm, it’s no surprise that he tells you an arm must come off to save your life. In twenty years of service to the country, I am appalled when I think how many limbs have come off for no reason more than a doctor’s whim.”

“And on that score, Colonel Pole,” said Darwin tartly, “your twenty years of service must also have told you that it would take a thousand of the worst doctors to match the limb-lopping effects of even the least energetic of generals. Look to the ills of your own profession.”