ncreased when the day passed, and there was still no sign
of the doctor's return. Inquiries were made. From these it appeared that
Dr. Parkman had been last seen alive between one and two o'clock on the
Friday afternoon. About half-past one he had visited a grocer's shop
in Bridge Street, made some purchases, and left behind him a paper bag
containing a lettuce, which, he said, he would call for on his way home.
Shortly before two o'clock he was seen by a workman, at a distance of
forty or fifty feet from the Medical College, going in that direction.
From that moment all certain trace of him was lost. His family knew that
he had made an appointment for half-past one that day, but where and
with whom they did not know. As a matter of fact, Professor John
W. Webster had appointed that hour to receive Dr. Parkman in his
lecture-room in the Medical College.

John W. Webster was at this time Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy
in Harvard University, a Doctor of Medicine and a Member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, the London Geological Society and the St.
Petersburg Mineralogical Society. He was the author of several works
on geology and chemistry, a man now close on sixty years of age. His
countenance was genial, his manner mild and unassuming; he was clean
shaven, wore spectacles, and looked younger than his years.

Professor Webster was popular with a large circle of friends. To those
who liked him he was a man of pleasing and attractive manners, artistic
in his tastes--he was especially fond of music--not a very profound
or remarkable chemist, but a pleasant social companion. His temper was
hasty and irritable. Spoilt in his boyhood as an only child, he was
self-willed and self-indulgent. His wife and daughters were better liked
than he. By unfriendly criticics{sic} the Professor was thought to be
selfish, fonder of the good things of the table and a good cigar than
was consistent with his duty to his family or the smallness of his
income. His father, a successful apothecary at Boston, had died in 1833,
leaving John, his only son, a fortune of some L10,000. In rather less
than ten years Webster had run through the whole of his inheritance. He
had built himself a costly mansion in Cambridge, spent a large sum
of money in collecting minerals, and delighted to exercise lavish
hospitality. By living consistently beyond his means he found himself
at length entirely dependent on his professional earnings. These