d."

"Please God!" sighed his sister.

"So now, Dr. Hamilton, may I rely upon your aid?"

"Most undoubtedly," said I. "You have only to tell me what my duties
are."

"Your first duty will be to return to your home. You will pack up
whatever you may need for a short visit to the country. We start
together from Paddington Station at 3:40 this afternoon."

"Do we go far?"

"As far as Pangbourne. Meet me at the bookstall at 3:30. I shall have
the tickets. Goodbye, Dr. Hamilton! And, by the way, there are two
things which I should be very glad if you would bring with you, in case
you have them. One is your case for collecting beetles, and the other
is a stick, and the thicker and heavier the better."

You may imagine that I had plenty to think of from the time that I left
Brook Street until I set out to meet Lord Linchmere at Paddington. The
whole fantastic business kept arranging and rearranging itself in
kaleidoscopic forms inside my brain, until I had thought out a dozen
explanations, each of them more grotesquely improbable than the last.
And yet I felt that the truth must be something grotesquely improbable
also. At last I gave up all attempts at finding a solution, and
contented myself with exactly carrying out the instructions which I had
received. With a hand valise, specimen-case, and a loaded cane, I was
waiting at the Paddington bookstall when Lord Linchmere arrived. He
was an even smaller man than I had thought--frail and peaky, with a
manner which was more nervous than it had been in the morning. He wore
a long, thick travelling ulster, and I observed that he carried a heavy
blackthorn cudgel in his hand.

"I have the tickets," said he, leading the way up the platform.

"This is our train. I have engaged a carriage, for I am particularly
anxious to impress one or two things upon you while we travel down."

And yet all that he had to impress upon me might have been said in a
sentence, for it was that I was to remember that I was there as a
protection to himself, and that I was not on any consideration to leave
him for an instant. This he repeated again and again as our journey
drew to a close, with an insistence which showed that his nerves were
thoroughly shaken.

"Yes," he said at last, in answer to my looks rather than to my words,
"I AM nervous, Dr. Hamilton. I have always been a timid man, and my
timidity depends upon my frail physical health. But my soul is firm,
and I can b