ow, an honest fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He
would not make a fit partner for a man with a great enterprise. He would
not make a fit partner for me."

At such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his pipe,
would simply raise his eyebrows and shake his head, with little
interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air.

One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a
frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be for ever talking
to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor
with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled
monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in the
silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so
that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham,
however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that he had uttered
a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the
occasion seemed to demand.

Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go
far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant
who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer
time than any man's memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over
the same matter.

"If you please, sir," said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one
morning, "do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?"

"All right, Styles?"

"Yes, sir. Right in his head, sir."

"Why should he not be, then?"

"Well, I don't know, sir. His habits has changed of late. He's not the
same man he used to be, though I make free to say that he was never
quite one of my gentlemen, like Mr. Hastie or yourself, sir. He's took
to talkin' to himself something awful. I wonder it don't disturb you. I
don't know what to make of him, sir."

"I don't know what business it is of yours, Styles."

"Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I
can't help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my
young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the
relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that
walks about his room sometimes when he's out and when the door's locked
on the outside."

"Eh? you're talking nonsense, Styles."

"Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more'n once with my own ears."

"Rubbish, Styles."

"Very good, sir. You'll rin