fire and
coaxed up a blaze.

"The greater part of the man's life--of his vital forces--goes out with
this Double," Dr. Silence resumed, after a moment's consideration, "and
a considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. So
the physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force,
but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, just
like the body of a materialising medium at a seance. Moreover, any mark
or injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced by
the phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body lying in
its trance--"

"An injury inflicted upon the one you say would be reproduced also on
the other?" repeated Maloney, his excitement growing again.

"Undoubtedly," replied the other quietly; "for there exists all the time
a continuous connection between the physical body and the Double--a
connection of matter, though of exceedingly attenuated, possibly of
etheric, matter. The wound _travels_, so to speak, from one to the
other, and if this connection were broken the result would be death."

"Death," repeated Maloney to himself, "death!" He looked anxiously at
our faces, his thoughts evidently beginning to clear.

"And this solidity?" he asked presently, after a general pause; "this
tearing of tents and flesh; this howling, and the marks of paws? You
mean that the Double--?"

"Has sufficient material drawn from the depleted body to produce
physical results? Certainly!" the doctor took him up. "Although to
explain at this moment such problems as the passage of matter through
matter would be as difficult as to explain how the thought of a mother
can actually break the bones of the child unborn."

Dr. Silence pointed out to sea, and Maloney, looking wildly about him,
turned with a violent start. I saw a canoe, with Sangree in the
stern-seat, slowly coming into view round the farther point. His hat was
off, and his tanned face for the first time appeared to me--to us all, I
think--as though it were the face of some one else. He looked like a
wild man. Then he stood up in the canoe to make a cast with the rod, and
he looked for all the world like an Indian. I recalled the expression of
his face as I had seen it once or twice, notably on that occasion of the
evening prayer, and an involuntary shudder ran down my spine.

At that very instant he turned and saw us where we lay, and his face
broke into a smile, so that his teeth show