of course that's true; but somehow I didn't like
to do it, though he was an odd kind of a man, and I fancy had been
better off. And then the doctor came and looked at him, and said as he
couldn't do nothing, and that night he died as I was a-sitting by his
bed; and I can tell you that, with one thing and another, we lost money
by him, for the few bits of clothes as he had were worth next to
nothing when they came to be sold.'

"I gave the woman half a sovereign for her trouble, and went home
thinking of Dr. Black and the epitaph she had made him, and wondering
at his strange fancy that he had been robbed. I take it that he had
very little to fear on that score, poor fellow; but I suppose that he
was really mad, and died in a sudden access of his mania. His landlady
said that once or twice when she had had occasion to go into his room
(to dun the poor wretch for his rent, most likely), he would keep her
at the door for about a minute, and that when she came in she would
find him putting away his tin box in the corner by the window. I
suppose he had become possessed with the idea of some great treasure,
and fancied himself a wealthy man in the midst of all his misery.

"_Explicit_, my tale is ended; and you see that though I knew Black I
know nothing of his wife or of the history of her death. That's the
Harlesden case, Salisbury, and I think it interests me all the more
deeply because there does not seem the shadow of a possibility that I
or anyone else will ever know more about it. What do you think of it?"

"Well, Dyson, I must say that I think you have contrived to surround
the whole thing with a mystery of your own making. I go for the
doctor's solution,--Black murdered his wife, being himself, in all
probability, an undeveloped lunatic."

"What? Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful,
too terrible, to be allowed to remain on the earth? You will remember
that the doctor said it was the brain of a devil?"

"Yes, yes; but he was speaking, of course, metaphorically. It's really
quite a simple matter, Dyson, if you only look at it like that."

"Ah, well, you may be right; but yet I am sure you are not. Well, well,
it's no good discussing it anymore. A little more Benedictine? That's
right; try some of this tobacco. Didn't you say that you had been
bothered by something,--something which happened that night we dined
together?"

"Yes, I have been worried, Dyson,--worried a great deal. I--But i