ut, dress him in any
old suit, shirt, and underwear. I don't see myself out of this khaki
for a long time ahead. He will be fit again long before Monday week,
when you're to join up: and when he is able to walk, there's an
envelope for him in the top right-hand drawer of my writing-table."

Jephson wrote twice to report that Dr. Foe was "going on favourably,"
and on the third day, that he had even dressed himself and taken a
walk. He had been away four hours and more--"which caused me much
anxiety," added Jephson.

But on the fourth day, on the eve of our starting for Rouen, I got
the following letter, in Jack's own handwriting:

"My dear Roddy,--I shall use the old name, since it is the last
time I shall address you; and you, starting for France, will
have no time to reach me and say that it is forbidden.

"I have killed Farrell. It was a stupid and a sorry ending.
At the last it was even quite brutal--bestially different from
anything I had imagined--and I had imagined many ways--while I
had control of the show.

"I have gone through madness. That again was part of the
bestiality I had not reckoned with. . . . And unless I take
steps I shall soon be back in worse bestiality, worse madness.
But I am taking steps. . . . And in the meantime, when you read
this you are to be sure that it is written by a man perfectly
sane.

"It is nothing that I have killed Farrell. I could have killed
him, as he could have killed me, at any time. I still think
that, while the pursuit lay with me, my methods were the more
delicate, and that I should never have goaded him to strike as
he goaded me.

"But I will grant that his methods were effective enough: and
along one line I should have allowed them to be original, if I
didn't know that he had picked up the hint of it on the _I'll
Away_. It was _rumour_ that had cursed me there, and he started
to work upon rumour. I had put up a plate in Harley Street, as
you know, upon the dregs of my capital. This meant a certain
bluff upon credit. If my reputation lasted me out six months,
all would be well. He divined this and struck at it. To do him
justice, I suppose that if he had walked up brutally to the
Medical Association and given them his story, I should have been
struck off the Register. He worked more subtly than that.
Ind