workman--the journeyman baker or
tailor, for instance, labouring year in year out in a single building--a
holiday ramble on Hampstead Heath is a veritable voyage of discovery;
whereas to the sailor the shifting panorama of the whole wide world is
but the commonplace of the day's work.

So I reflected as I took my place in the train at Liverpool Street on
the following day. There had been a time when a trip by rail to the
borders of Epping Forest would have been far from a thrilling
experience; now, after vegetating in the little world of Fetter Lane, it
was quite an adventure.

The enforced inactivity of a railway journey is favourable to thought,
and I had much to think about. The last few weeks had witnessed
momentous changes in my outlook. New interests had arisen, new
friendships had grown up; and, above all, there had stolen into my life
that supreme influence that, for good or for evil, according to my
fortune, was to colour and pervade it even to its close. Those few days
of companionable labour in the reading-room, with the homely
hospitalities of the milk-shop and the pleasant walks homeward through
the friendly London streets, had called into existence a new world--a
world in which the gracious personality of Ruth Bellingham was the one
dominating reality. And thus, as I leaned back in a corner of the
railway carriage with an unlighted pipe in my hand, the events of the
immediate past, together with those more problematical ones of the
impending future, occupied me rather to the exclusion of the business of
the moment, which was to review the remains collected in the Woodford
mortuary, until, as the train approached Stratford, the odours of the
soap and bone-manure factories poured in at the open window and (by a
natural association of ideas) brought me back to the object of my quest.

As to the exact purpose of this expedition, I was not very clear; but I
knew that I was acting as Thorndyke's proxy and thrilled with pride at
the thought. But what particular light my investigations were to throw
upon the intricate Bellingham case I had no very definite idea. With a
view to fixing the course of procedure in my mind, I took Thorndyke's
written instructions from my pocket and read them over carefully. They
were very full and explicit, making ample allowance for my lack of
experience in medico-legal matters:--

1. Do not appear to make minute investigations or in any way
excite remark.

2. Ascer