n't take the contract to explain the thing. But it does
seem some way droll that the old schooner should be wrecked so soon
after what has happened to the old skipper. If you don't see it, or
sense it, I don't insist. What's yours, Denyven?"

The person addressed as Denyven promptly replied, with a fine
sonorous English accent, "a mug of 'alf an' 'alf,--with a head on it,
Snelling."

At the same moment Mr. Craggie, in the inner room was saying to
the school-master,--

"I must really take issue with you there, Mr. Pinkham. I admit
there's a good deal in spiritualism which we haven't got at yet; the
science is in its infancy; it is still attached to the bosom of
speculation. It is a beautiful science, that of psychological
phenomena, and the spiritualists will yet become an influential class
of"--Mr. Craggie was going to say voters, but glided over
it--"persons. I believe in clairvoyance myself to a large extent.
Before my appointment to the post-office I had it very strong. I've
no doubt that in the far future this mysterious factor will be made
great use of in criminal cases; but at present I should resort to it
only in the last extremity,--the very last extremity, Mr. Pinkham!"

"Oh, of course," said the school-master deprecatingly. "I threw it
out only as the merest suggestion. I shouldn't think of--of--you
understand me?"

"Is it beyond the dreams of probability," said Mr. Craggie,
appealing to Lawyer Perkins, "that clairvoyants may eventually be
introduced into cases in our courts?"

"They are now," said Mr. Perkins, with a snort,--"the police bring
'em it."

Mr. Craggie finished the remainder of his glass of sherry in
silence, and presently rose to go. Coroner Whidden and Mr. Ward had
already gone. The guests in the public room were thinning out; a
gloom, indefinable and shapeless like the night, seemed to have
fallen upon the few that lingered. At a somewhat earlier hour than
usual the gas was shut off in the Stillwater hotel.

In the lonely house in Welch's Court a light was still burning.

IV

A sorely perplexed man sat there, bending over his papers by the
lamp-light. Mr. Taggett had established himself at the Shackford
house on his arrival, preferring it to the hotel, where he would have
been subjected to the curiosity of the guests and to endless
annoyances. Up to this moment, perhaps not a dozen persons in the
place had had more than a passing glimpse of him. He was a very busy
man, wo