, and called on every
one to rise in the same cause as for a heroic revolution.
The other mistresses and I attempted to stop the wretched man,
but I must confess that by an accident this very intercession
produced the worst explosion of his insanity. He was waving
the hammer, and wildly demanding the names of everybody;
and it so happened that Miss Brown, one of the younger teachers,
was wearing a brown dress--a reddish-brown dress that went quietly
enough with the warmer colour of her hair, as well she knew.
She was a nice girl, and nice girls do know about those things.
But when our maniac discovered that we really had a Miss Brown
who WAS brown, his ~idee fixe~ blew up like a powder magazine,
and there, in the presence of all the mistresses and girls,
he publicly proposed to the lady in the red-brown dress.
You can imagine the effect of such a scene at a girls' school.
At least, if you fail to imagine it, I certainly fail
to describe it.

"Of course, the anarchy died down in a week or two, and I can
think of it now as a joke. There was only one curious detail,
which I will tell you, as you say your inquiry is vital; but I should
desire you to consider it a little more confidential than the rest.
Miss Brown, who was an excellent girl in every way, did quite
suddenly and surreptitiously leave us only a day or two afterwards.
I should never have thought that her head would be the one
to be really turned by so absurd an excitement.--Believe me,
yours faithfully, Ada Gridley.

"I think," said Pym, with a really convincing simplicity and seriousness,
"that these letters speak for themselves."

Mr. Moon rose for the last time in a darkness that gave no hint
of whether his native gravity was mixed with his native irony.

"Throughout this inquiry," he said, "but especially in this its
closing phase, the prosecution has perpetually relied upon one argument;
I mean the fact that no one knows what has become of all the unhappy
women apparently seduced by Smith. There is no sort of proof
that they were murdered, but that implication is perpetually made
when the question is asked as to how they died. Now I am not
interested in how they died, or when they died, or whether they died.
But I am interested in another analogous question--that of how they
were born, and when they were born, and whether they were born.
Do not misunderstand me. I do not dispute the existence of
these women, or the veracity of those who have w