e would catch up a pencil, and on
the back of an old envelope from his pocket he would sketch out some
novel contrivance for piercing a ship's netting and getting at her side,
which might no doubt involve some technical impossibility, but which
would at least be quite plausible and new. Then as he drew, his
bristling eyebrows would contract, his small eyes would gleam with
excitement, his lips would be pressed together, and he would end by
banging on the paper with his open hand, and shouting in his exultation.
You would think that his one mission in life was to invent torpedoes.
But next instant, if you were to express surprise as to how it was that
the Egyptian workmen elevated the stones to the top of the pyramids, out
would come the pencil and envelope, and he would propound a scheme for
doing that with equal energy and conviction. This ingenuity was joined
to an extremely sanguine nature. As he paced up and down in his jerky
quick-stepping fashion after one of these flights of invention, he would
take out patents for it, receive you as his partner in the enterprise,
have it adopted in every civilised country, see all conceivable
applications of it, count up his probable royalties, sketch out the
novel methods in which he would invest his gains, and finally retire
with the most gigantic fortune that has ever been amassed. And you would
be swept along by his words, and would be carried every foot of the
way with him, so that it would come as quite a shock to you when you
suddenly fell back to earth again, and found yourself trudging the city
street a poor student, with Kirk's Physiology under your arm, and hardly
the price of your luncheon in your pocket.

I read over what I have written, but I can see that I give you no real
insight into the demoniac cleverness of Cullingworth. His views upon
medicine were most revolutionary, but I daresay that if things fulfil
their promise I may have a good deal to say about them in the sequel.
With his brilliant and unusual gifts, his fine athletic record, his
strange way of dressing (his hat on the back of his head and his throat
bare), his thundering voice, and his ugly, powerful face, he had quite
the most marked individuality of any man that I have ever known.

Now, you will think me rather prolix about this man; but, as it looks
as if his life might become entwined with mine, it is a subject of
immediate interest to me, and I am writing all this for the purpose
of reviving