ly regarding his friend meanwhile. Then he
remarked, in a matter-of-fact tone:

"So you are your own grandfather, and Miss Penrhyn is her own
grandmother."

Dartmouth moved uneasily. "It sounds ridiculous--but--don't chaff."

"My dear boy, I was never more serious in my life. I merely wanted to
be sure that I had got it straight. It is A.B.C. by this time to you,
but it has exploded in my face like a keg of gunpowder, and I am a
trifle dazed. But, to come down to deadly earnest, will you allow me
to speak to you from the medical point of view? You know I had some
idea at one time of afflicting the community with one more physician,
until we stumbled on those coal mines, and my prospective patients
were spared premature acquaintance with the golden stairs. May I
speak as an unfledged doctor, but still as one burdened with unused
knowledge?"

"You can say what you like."

"Very well, then. You may or may not be aware that what you are
pleased to call the blues, or moods, are, in your case, nothing more
or less than melancholia. When they are at their worst they are the
form known as melancholia attonita. In other words, you are not only
steeped in melancholy, but your brain is in, a state of stupor:
you are all but comatose. These attacks are not frequent, and are
generally the result of a powerful mental shock or strain. I
remember you had one once after you had crammed for two months for an
examination and couldn't pull through. You scared the life out of
the tutors and the boys, and it was not until I threatened to put
you under the pump that you came to. Your ordinary attacks are not so
alarming to your friends, but when indulged in too frequently, they
are a good deal more dangerous."

He paused a moment, but Dartmouth made no reply, and he went on.

"Any man who yields habitually to melancholia may expect his brain,
sooner or later, to degenerate from its original strength, and relax
the toughness and compactness of its fibre. Absolute dementia may not
be the result for some years, but there will be occasional and
painful indications of the end for a long space before it arrives. The
indications, as a rule, will assume the form of visions and dreams and
wild imaginings of various sorts. Now do you understand me?"

"You mean," said Dartmouth, wheeling about and looking him directly in
the eyes, "you mean that I am going mad?"

"I mean, my dear boy, that you will be a raving maniac inside of a
month, unles