al fittings there
were none. But the appearances suggested that the crazy vehicle had been
prepared with considerable forethought for its present use. The inside
handles of the doors had apparently been removed; the wooden shutters
were permanently fixed in their places; and a paper label, stuck on the
transom below each window, had a suspicious appearance of having been
put there to cover the painted name and address of the job-master or
livery-stable keeper who had originally owned the carriage.

These observations gave me abundant food for reflection. This Mr. Weiss
must be an excessively conscientious man if he had considered that his
promise to Mr. Graves committed him to such extraordinary precautions.
Evidently no mere following of the letter of the law was enough to
satisfy his sensitive conscience. Unless he had reasons for sharing Mr.
Graves's unreasonable desire for secrecy--for one could not suppose that
these measures of concealment had been taken by the patient himself.

The further suggestions that evolved themselves from this consideration
were a little disquieting. Whither was I being carried and for what
purpose? The idea that I was bound for some den of thieves where I
might be robbed and possibly murdered, I dismissed with a smile. Thieves
do not make elaborately concerted plans to rob poor devils like me.
Poverty has its compensations in that respect. But there were other
possibilities. Imagination backed by experience had no difficulty in
conjuring up a number of situations in which a medical man might be
called upon, with or without coercion, either to witness or actively to
participate in the commission of some unlawful act.

Reflections of this kind occupied me pretty actively if not very
agreeably during this strange journey. And the monotony was relieved,
too, by other distractions. I was, for example, greatly interested to
notice how, when one sense is in abeyance, the other senses rouse into a
compensating intensity of perception. I sat smoking my pipe in darkness
which was absolute save for the dim glow from the smouldering tobacco in
the bowl, and seemed to be cut off from all knowledge of the world
without. But yet I was not. The vibrations of the carriage, with its
hard springs and iron-tired wheels, registered accurately and plainly
the character of the roadway. The harsh rattle of granite setts, the
soft bumpiness of macadam, the smooth rumble of wood-pavement, the
jarring and swervi