t me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that time
I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a
gesture of anger and vanished. I realised that he had just died, and
that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in
safety for him.

"Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same
hour for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple
thing in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone.
It has brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the
expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my
wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the
breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared
with you last night. We are both much indebted to you for your
gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when
we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us
as to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question."

This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me--a
story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility,
but which, after my experience of the night before, and my previous
knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact.
I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my
reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my
host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the
next train.

"My dear doctor," cried Sir Dominick in great distress, "you make me
feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in
intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own
burden."

"It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London," I answered;
"but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of
last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to
ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in
your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again."

My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my
fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back
in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my
memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested
my attention when I had read it.

"In the case