would," said I.

"Tee--hee!" he giggled; "Wouldn't it be funny to plant something phony on
her--"

I waved my arms rather gracefully in my excitement:

"That is the germ of an idea!" I said. "If we could plant
something--something--far away from here--very far away--if we could
bury something--like the Cardiff Giant--"

"Hundreds and hundreds of miles away!"

"Thousands!" I insisted, enthusiastically.

"Tee-hee! In Tasmania, for example! Maybe a Tasmanian Devil might acquire
her!"

"There exists a gnat," said I, "in Borneo--_Gnatus soporificus_--and
when this tiny gnat stings people they never entirely wake up. It's
really rather a pleasurable catastrophe, I understand. Life becomes
one endless cat-nap--one delightful siesta, with intervals for light
nourishment.... She--ah--could sit very comfortably in some pleasant
retreat and rock in a rocking-chair and doze quite happily through the
years to come.... And from your description of her I should say that
the Soldiers' Home might receive her."

"It won't do," he said, gloomily.

"Why? Is it too much like crime?"

"Oh not at all. Only if she went to Borneo she'd be sure to take a
mosquito-bar with her."

In the depressed silence which ensued Dr. Fooss suddenly made several
Futurist observations through his nose with monotonous but authoritative
regularity. I tried to catch his meaning and his eye. The one remained
cryptic, the other shut.

Lezard sat thinking very hard. And as I fidgetted in my chair, fiddling
nervously with various objects lying on my desk I chanced to pick up a
letter from the pile of still unopened mail at my elbow.

Still pondering on Professor Bottomly's proposed destruction, I turned
the letter over idly and my preoccupied gaze rested on the postmark.
After a moment I leaned forward and examined it more attentively. The
letter directed to me was postmarked Fort Carcajou, Cook's Peninsula,
Baffin Land; and now I recalled the handwriting, having already seen it
three or four times within the last month or so.

"Lezard," I said, "that lunatic trapper from Baffin Land has written to
me again. What do you suppose is the matter with him? Is he just plain
crazy or does he think he can be funny with me?"

Lezard gazed at me absently. Then, all at once a gleam of savage interest
lighted his somewhat solemn features.

"Read the letter to me," he said, with an evil smile which instantly
animated my own latent imagination. And immediately