os,

"Windermere.

"CARLO MIO,--In the Amsterdam edition of 1698 of _The Confessions
of Parthenio the Mystic_ occur the passages given below. To your
serious consideration, O friend of my heart, I recommend these
words. To read them much patience is required. But they are
freighted with wisdom, as you will discover long before you reach
the end of them, and have a deep significance for that great cause
to which the souls of both of us are knit by bonds which in this
life can never be severed. When you read these lines, the hand that
writes them will be cold in the grave. But Nature allows nothing to
be lost, and somewhere in the wide universe the better part of me
(the mystic EGO) will still exist; and if there be any truth in the
doctrine of the affinity of souls, then shall you and I meet again
elsewhere. Till that time shall come--Adieu!

"Thine,

"PAUL PLATZOFF."

Having carefully read these lines twice over, Captain Ducie refolded the
paper, put it away in an inner pocket, and buttoned his coat over it.
Then he took his way, deep in thought, back to "The Golden Griffin."

The Russian's eager eyes asked him: "What success?" before he could say
a word.

"I am sorry to say that I have not been able to find the paper," said
Captain Ducie in slow, deliberate tones. "I have found something
else--your diamond pin, which you appear to have lost out of your
scarf."

Platzoff gazed at him with a sort of blank despair on his saffron face,
but a low moan was his only reply. Then he turned his face to the wall
and shut his eyes.

Captain Ducie was a patient man, and he waited without speaking for a
full hour. At the end of that time Platzoff turned, and held out a
feeble hand.

"Forgive me, my friend--if you will allow me to call you so," he said.
"I must seem horribly ungrateful after all the trouble I have put you
to, but I do not feel so. The loss of my MS. affected me so deeply for a
little while that I could think of nothing else. I shall get over it by
degrees."

"If I remember rightly," remarked Ducie, "you said that the lost MS. was
merely a complicated array of figures. Of what possible value can it be
to anyone who may chance to find it?"

"Of no value whatever," answered Platzoff, "unless they who find it
should also be