l seriously!" I observed, a trifle
annoyed.

"Why should I?" asked my friend, Ambler Jevons, with a deep pull at
his well-coloured briar. "What you've told me shows quite plainly that
you have in the first place viewed one little circumstance with
suspicion, then brooded over it until it has become magnified and now
occupies your whole mind. Take my advice, old chap, and think nothing
more about it. Why should you make yourself miserable for no earthly
reason? You're a rising man--hard up like most of us--but under old
Eyton's wing you've got a brilliant future before you. Unlike myself,
a mere nobody, struggling against the tide of adversity, you're
already a long way up the medical ladder. If you climb straight you'll
end with an appointment of Physician-in-Ordinary and a knighthood
thrown in as makeweight. Old Macalister used to prophesy it, you
remember, when we were up at Edinburgh. Therefore, I can't, for the
life of me, discover any cause why you should allow yourself to have
these touches of the blues--unless it's liver, or some other internal
organ about which you know a lot more than I do. Why, man, you've got
the whole world before you, and as for Ethelwynn----"

"Ethelwynn!" I ejaculated, starting up from my chair. "Leave her out
of the question! We need not discuss her," and I walked to the
mantelshelf to light a fresh cigarette.

"As you wish, my dear fellow," said my merry, easy-going friend. "I
merely wish to point out the utter folly of all this suspicion."

"I don't suspect her," I snapped.

"I didn't suggest that." Then, after a pause during which he smoked on
vigorously, he suddenly asked, "Well now, be frank, Ralph, whom do you
really suspect?"

I was silent. Truth to tell, his question entirely nonplussed me. I
had suspicions--distinct suspicions--that certain persons surrounding
me were acting in accord towards some sinister end, but which of those
persons were culpable I certainly could not determine. It was that
very circumstance which was puzzling me to the point of distraction.

"Ah!" I replied. "That's the worst of it. I know that the whole affair
seems quite absurd, but I must admit that I can't fix suspicion upon
anyone in particular."

Jevons laughed outright.

"In that case, my dear Boyd, you ought really to see the folly of the
thing."

"Perhaps I ought, but I don't," I answered, facing him with my back to
the fire. "To you, my most intimate friend, I've explained, in
stric