in Isaiah, was a stamp in violet
ink marked H. M.'s Prison--well, I won't say where.

I may state, however, that the clue enabled me in after years to
learn an episode in this man's life which had brought about his
ruin. There is no need to repeat it or to say more than that
gambling and an evil use of his medical knowledge to provide the
money to pay his debts, were the cause of his fall. The strange
thing is that he should have kept the book which had probably
been given to him by the prison chaplain. Still everybody makes
mistakes sometimes. Or it may have had associations for him, and
of course he had never seen this stamp upon an unread page, which
happened to leap to my eye.

Now I was able to make a shrewd guess at his later career. After
his trouble he had emigrated and began to practise in South
Africa. Somehow his identity had been discovered; his past was
dragged up against him, possibly by rivals jealous of his skill;
his business went and he found it advisable to retire to the
Transvaal before the Annexation, at that time the home of sundry
people of broken repute. Even there he did not stop in a town,
but hid himself upon the edge of savagery. Here he foregathered
with another man of queer character, Marnham, and in his company
entered upon some doubtful but lucrative form of trade while
still indulging his love of medicine by doctoring and operating
upon natives, over whom he would in this way acquire great
influence. Indeed, as I discovered before the day was over, he
had quite a little hospital at the back of the house in which
were four or five beds occupied by Kaffirs and served by two male
native nurses whom he had trained. Also numbers of out-patients
visited him, some of whom travelled from great distances, and
occasionally, but not often, he attended white people who chanced
to be in the neighbourhood.

The three of us breakfasted in a really charming room from the
window of which could be studied a view as beautiful as any I
know. The Kaffirs who waited were well trained and dressed in
neat linen uniforms. The cooking was good; there was real silver
on the table, then a strange sight in that part of Africa, and
amongst engravings and other pictures upon the walls, hung an oil
portrait of a very beautiful young woman with dark hair and eyes.

"Is that your daughter, Mr. Marnham?" I asked.

"No," he replied rather shortly, "it is her mother."

Immediately afterwards he was call