y recollection
of the daguerreotype, and then, having directed the letter, posted it
that very night, after which, feeling that I had done all that could be
done, I retired to bed, with a mind too anxious to allow me to sleep.

PART II.

I got an answer from Leicester, where the Colonel resided, within two
days. I have it before me as I write, and copy it verbatim.

"DEAR BOB," it said, "I remember the man well. I was with him at
Calcutta, and afterwards at Hyderabad. He was a curious, solitary sort
of mortal; but a gallant soldier enough, for he distinguished himself at
Sobraon, and was wounded, if I remember right. He was not popular in
his corps--they said he was a pitiless, cold-blooded fellow, with
no geniality in him. There was a rumour, too, that he was a
devil-worshipper, or something of that sort, and also that he had
the evil eye, which, of course, was all nonsense. He had some strange
theories, I remember, about the power of the human will and the effects
of mind upon matter.

"How are you getting on with your medical studies? Never forget, my boy,
that your father's son has every claim upon me, and that if I can serve
you in any way I am always at your command.--Ever affectionately yours,

"EDWARD JOYCE.

"P.S.--By the way, Northcott did not fall in action. He was killed after
peace was declared in a crazy attempt to get some of the eternal fire
from the sun-worshippers' temple. There was considerable mystery about
his death."

I read this epistle over several times--at first with a feeling of
satisfaction, and then with one of disappointment. I had come on some
curious information, and yet hardly what I wanted. He was an eccentric
man, a devil-worshipper, and rumoured to have the power of the evil eye.
I could believe the young lady's eyes, when endowed with that cold, grey
shimmer which I had noticed in them once or twice, to be capable of any
evil which human eye ever wrought; but still the superstition was
an effete one. Was there not more meaning in that sentence which
followed--"He had theories of the power of the human will and of the
effect of mind upon matter"? I remember having once read a quaint
treatise, which I had imagined to be mere charlatanism at the time, of
the power of certain human minds, and of effects produced by them at a
distance.

Was Miss Northcott endowed with some exceptional power of the sort?

The idea grew upon me, and very shortly I had evidence which con