ibly mangled. It was a
peaked corner of the sack sticking out of the soil that attracted
attention. I cannot bring myself to write in greater detail.

I forgot to say the men's real names were Kidman and Gallop. I feel
sure I have heard them, but no one here seems to know anything about
them.

I am coming to you as soon as I can after the funeral. I must tell you
when we meet what I think of it all.

TWO DOCTORS

TWO DOCTORS

It is a very common thing, in my experience, to find papers shut up in
old books; but one of the rarest things to come across any such that
are at all interesting. Still it does happen, and one should never
destroy them unlooked at. Now it was a practice of mine before the war
occasionally to buy old ledgers of which the paper was good, and which
possessed a good many blank leaves, and to extract these and use them
for my own notes and writings. One such I purchased for a small sum in
1911. It was tightly clasped, and its boards were warped by having for
years been obliged to embrace a number of extraneous sheets.
Three-quarters of this inserted matter had lost all vestige of
importance for any living human being: one bundle had not. That it
belonged to a lawyer is certain, for it is endorsed: _The strangest
case I have yet met_, and bears initials, and an address in Gray's
Inn. It is only materials for a case, and consists of statements by
possible witnesses. The man who would have been the defendant or
prisoner seems never to have appeared. The _dossier_ is not complete,
but, such as it is, it furnishes a riddle in which the supernatural
appears to play a part. You must see what you can make of it.

The following is the setting and the tale as I elicit it.

Dr. Abell was walking in his garden one afternoon waiting for his
horse to be brought round that he might set out on his visits for the
day. As the place was Islington, the month June, and the year 1718, we
conceive the surroundings as being countrified and pleasant. To him
entered his confidential servant, Luke Jennett, who had been with him
twenty years.

"I said I wished to speak to him, and what I had to say might take
some quarter of an hour. He accordingly bade me go into his study,
which was a room opening on the terrace path where he was walking, and
came in himself and sat down. I told him that, much against my will, I
must look out for another place. He inquired what was my reason, in
consideration I had been