t the same
time I was contributing a novel (anonymously) to the Fleet Street
Magazine, a very respectable publication, though perhaps a little dull.
The editor had expressly requested me to make things rather more lively,
and I therefore gave my imagination free play in the construction of my
plot. I introduced a beautiful girl, daughter of a preacher in the
Shaker community. Her hand was sought in marriage by a sporting baronet,
who had seen her as he pursued the chase through the pathless glens of
the New Forest. This baronet she married after suffering things
intolerable from the opposition of the Shakers. Here I had a good deal
of padding about Shakers and their ways; and, near the end of the sixth
chapter my heroine became the wife of Sir William Buckley. But the
baronet proved a perfect William Rufus for variegated and versatile
blackguardism. Lady Buckley's life was made impossible by his abominable
conduct. At this juncture my heroine chanced to be obliged to lunch at a
railway refreshment-room. My last chapter had described the poor lady
lunching lonely in the bleak and gritty waiting room of Swilby Junction,
lonely except for the company of her little boy. I showed how she fell
into a strange and morbid vein of reflection suggested by the qualities
of the local sherry. If she was to live, her lord and master, Sir W.
Buckley, must die! And I described how a fiendish temptation was
whispered to her by the glass of local sherry. "William's constitution,
strong as it is," she murmured inwardly, "could never stand a dozen of
that sherry. Suppose he chanced to partake of it--accidentally--rather
late in the evening." Amidst these reflections I allowed the December
instalment of "The Baronet's Wife" to come to a conclusion in the Fleet
Street Magazine. Obviously crime was in the wind.

It is my habit to read the "Agony Column" (as it is flippantly called),
the second column in the outer sheet of the Times. Who knows but he may
there see something to his advantage; and, besides, the mysterious
advertisements may suggest ideas for plots. One day I took up the "Agony
Column," as usual, at my club, and, to my surprise, read the following
advertisement:--

"F. S. M.--SHERRY WINE. WRECK OF THE "JINGO."--WRETCHED BOY: Stay your
unhallowed hand! Would you expose an erring MOTHER'S secret? Author
will please communicate with Messrs. Mantlepiece and Co., Solicitors,
Upton-on-the-Wold."

As soon as I saw