risoner in the next cell would complain of feelin' uncomfortable. If
possible, he would be removed to another; if not, he was damd for his
fancies. And so it might be goin' on to now, if you hadn't pried and
interfered. I don't blame you at this moment, sir. Likely you were an
instrument in the hands of Providence; only, as the instrument, you must
now take the burden of the truth on your own shoulders. I am a dying man,
but I cannot die till I have confessed. Per'aps you may find it in your
hart some day to give up a prayer for me--but it must be for the Major as
well.

"Your obedient servant,

"J. JOHNSON."

* * * * *

What comment of my own can I append to this wild narrative?
Professionally, and apart from personal experiences, I should rule it the
composition of an epileptic. That a noted journalist, nameless as he was
and is to me, however nomadic in habit, could disappear from human ken,
and his fellows rest content to leave him unaccounted for, seems a tax
upon credulity so stupendous that I cannot seriously endorse the
statement.

Yet, also--there _is_ that little matter of my personal experience.

DINAH'S MAMMOTH

On a day early in the summer of the present year Miss Dinah Groom was
found lying dead off a field-path of the little obscure Wiltshire village
which she had named her "rest and be thankful." At the date of her
decease she was not an old woman, though any one marking her white hair
and much-furrowed features might have supposed her one. The hair,
however, was ample in quantity, the wrinkles rather so many under-scores
of energy than evidences of senility; and until the blinds were down over
her soul, she had looked into and across the world with a pair of eyes
that seemed to reflect the very blue and white of a June sky. No doubt
she had thought to breast the hills and sail the seas again in some
renaissance of vigour. No doubt her "retreat," like a Roman Catholic's,
was designed to be merely temporary. She aped the hermit for the sake of
a sojourn in the hermitage. She came to her island of Avalon to be
restored of her weary limbs and her blistered feet, so to speak; and
there her heart, too weak for her spirit, failed her, and she fell
amongst the young budding poppies, and died.

I use the word "heart" literally, and in no sentimental sense. To talk of
associations of sentiment in connection with this lady would be
misleading. She herself would not