books one day, but
actually contenting himself with the daily paper and an occasional
magazine.

Such was Mr Meggs at thirty-six. The necessity for working for a living
and a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the more
expensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare had up to that
time kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he had
twinges; more often he had none.

Then came the legacy, and with it Mr Meggs let himself go. He left
London and retired to his native village, where, with a French cook and
a series of secretaries to whom he dictated at long intervals
occasional paragraphs of a book on British Butterflies on which he
imagined himself to be at work, he passed the next twenty years. He
could afford to do himself well, and he did himself extremely well.
Nobody urged him to take exercise, so he took no exercise. Nobody
warned him of the perils of lobster and welsh rabbits to a man of
sedentary habits, for it was nobody's business to warn him. On the
contrary, people rather encouraged the lobster side of his character,
for he was a hospitable soul and liked to have his friends dine with
him. The result was that Nature, as is her wont, laid for him, and got
him. It seemed to Mr Meggs that he woke one morning to find himself a
chronic dyspeptic. That was one of the hardships of his position, to
his mind. The thing seemed to hit him suddenly out of a blue sky. One
moment, all appeared to be peace and joy; the next, a lively and
irritable wild-cat with red-hot claws seemed somehow to have introduced
itself into his interior.

So Mr Meggs decided to end it.

In this crisis of his life the old methodical habits of his youth
returned to him. A man cannot be a clerk in even an obscure firm of
shippers for a great length of time without acquiring system, and Mr
Meggs made his preparations calmly and with a forethought worthy of a
better cause.

And so we find him, one glorious June morning, seated at his desk,
ready for the end.

Outside, the sun beat down upon the orderly streets of the village.
Dogs dozed in the warm dust. Men who had to work went about their toil
moistly, their minds far away in shady public-houses.

But Mr Meggs, in his study, was cool both in mind and body.

Before him, on the desk, lay six little slips of paper. They were
bank-notes, and they represented, with the exception of a few pounds,
his entire worldly wealth. Beside them were six letters, six en