ous ponds from which they had been
recovered, but these gave me little help in determining the length of
time during which they had been submerged. They were, of course,
encrusted with mud, and little wisps of pond-weed stuck to them in
places; but these facts furnished only the vaguest measure of time.

Some of the traces were, indeed, more informing. To several of the
bones, for instance, there adhered the dried egg-clusters of the common
pond-snail, and in one of the hollows of the right shoulder-blade (the
"infraspinous fossa") was a group of the mud-built tubes of the red
river-worm. These remains gave proof of a considerable period of
submersion, and since they could not have been deposited on the bones
until all the flesh had disappeared they furnished evidence that some
time--a month or two at any rate--had elapsed since this had happened.
Incidentally, too, their distribution showed the position in which the
bones had lain, and though this appeared to be of no importance in the
existing circumstances, I made careful notes of the situation of each
adherent body, illustrating their position by rough sketches.

The sergeant watched my proceedings with an indulgent smile.

"You're making a regular inventory, sir," he remarked, "as if you were
going to put 'em up for auction. I shouldn't think those snails' eggs
would be much help in identification. And all that has been done
already," he added as I produced my measuring-tape.

"No doubt," I replied; "but my business is to make independent
observations, to check the others, if necessary." And I proceeded to
measure each of the principal bones separately and to compare those of
the opposite sides. The agreement in dimensions and general
characteristics of the pairs of bones left little doubt that all were
parts of one skeleton, a conclusion that was confirmed by the eburnated
patch on the head of the right thigh-bone and the corresponding patch
in the socket of the right hip-bone. When I had finished my
measurements I went over the entire series of bones in detail,
examining each with the closest attention for any of those signs which
Thorndyke had indicated, and eliciting nothing but a monotonously
reiterated negative. They were distressingly and disappointingly
normal.

"Well, sir, what do you make of 'em?" the sergeant asked cheerfully as
I shut up my notebook and straightened my back. "Whose bones are they?
Are they Mr. Bellingham's, think ye?"