sfixed by a long skewer, and at his first glance at
the uppermost his face assumed an expression of almost ludicrous
bewilderment. He actually rubbed his eyes before he looked a second time.

"One dozen shirts," he read, "four under-flannels, four pair socks, one
dozen handkerchiefs, two sleeping-suits--marked Francis Beveridge! the
account rendered to Dr G. Twiddel! What in the name of wonderment is the
meaning of this?"

He sat down with the bill in his hand and gazed hard at it.

"Precisely my outfit," he said to himself.

"Am I--Does it----? What a rum thing!"

He sat for about ten minutes looking hard at the floor. Then he burst out
laughing, resumed in a moment his air of philosophical opportunism, and
set about a further search of the desk. He looked at the bills and seemed
to find nothing more to interest him. Then he glanced at one or two
letters in the drawers, threw the first few back again, and at last paused
over one.

"Twiddel to Billson," he said to himself. "This may possibly be worth
looking at."

It was dated more than a month back from the town of Fogelschloss.

"Dear Tom," it ran, "we are having an A 1 time. Old Welsh is in splendid
form, doing the part to perfection. He has never given himself away yet,
not even when drunk, which, I am sorry to say, he has been too often. But
then old Welsh is so funny when he is drunk that it makes him all the more
like the original, or at least what the original is supposed to be.

"Of course we don't dare to venture into places where we would see too
many English. This is quite an amusing place for a German town, some baths
and a kind of a gambling-table, and some pretty girls--for Germans. There
is a sporting aristocrat here, in an old castle, who is very friendly, and
is much impressed with Welsh's account of his family plate and
deer-forest, and has asked us once or twice to come out and see him. We
are no end of swells, I assure you.

"Ta, ta, old chap. Hope the practice prospers in your hands. Don't kill
_all_ the patients before I come back.--Ever thine,

GEORGE TWIDDEL."

"From this I conclude that Dr Twiddel is on the festive side of forty," he
reflected; "there are elements of mystery and a general atmosphere of
alcohol about it, but that's all, I'm afraid."

He put it back in the drawer, but the bill he slipped into his pocket.

"And now," thought he, "it is time I made the first m