d."

"Exactly the point. Any one would, and almost any one would pay money to
see, with his own eye the attested evidence of human, or approximately
human, life in other spheres. It was a big stake that Tuxall, Farley
and Company were playing for. Do you begin to see the meaning of the big
print now?"

"I've heard nothing about big prints," said the puzzled clergyman.

"Pardon me, you've heard but you haven't understood. However, to go on,
Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich
harvest from public curiosity and credulity. Tuxall planted a big rock
under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and
sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to
counterfeit a meteor."

"Amazing!" cried the clergyman.

"Such a meteor, furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before. If you
were to visit Tuxall's barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder
underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious
than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some quarry and did
the scorching and carving himself, I suppose."

"And you discovered all that in a half-day's visit to Harwick?" asked
the Reverend Mr. Prentice incredulously.

"No, but in half-minute's reading of the 'gibberish' which you threw
away."

Taking from the desk the reddish roll which he had brought into the room
with him, he sent the loose end of it wheeling across the floor, until
it lay, fully outspread. In black letters against red, the legend glared
and blared its announcement:

MARVELOUS MAN-LIKE MONSTER!

"Those letters, Mr. Prentice," pursued the Ad-Visor, "measure just three
feet from top to bottom. The phrase 'three feet high' which so puzzled
you, as combined with the adjectives of great size, was obviously a
printer's direction. All through the smudged 'copy,' which you threw
away, there run alliterative lines, 'Stupendous Scientific Sensation,'
'Veritable Visitor Void' and finally 'Marvelous Man-l--Monster.' Only
one trade is irretrievably committed to and indubitably hall-marked by
alliteration, the circus trade. You'll recall that Farley insensibly
fell into the habit even in his advertisement; 'lost lad,' 'retained for
ransom' and 'Mortimer Morley.' Therefore I had the combination circus
poster, an alleged meteor which burned a barn in a highly suspicious
manner, and an apparently purposeless kidnapping. The inference was
as simple as it was certain.