olated abnormality. The two men stood close to the
glass, peering in.

"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister. "I feel a queer sort of
surprise even now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, you
know, rolled up. Coming here again brings it all back to me."

"Have you never seen him since that time?" asked Warming.

"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but business nowadays is too
serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most of
the time."

"If I remember rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"

"Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and
white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process.
Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."

"Good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see
them there."

"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed Isbister with
satisfaction. "The world changes. When he fell asleep, twenty years ago,
I was down at Boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble,
old-fashioned ambition. I didn't expect that some day my pigments would
glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again
to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."

Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. "I just missed seeing
you, if I recollect aright."

"You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It
was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the
seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea."

"The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming; "the second one."

"Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at
Wookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My
landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer
when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And
the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before
him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights
and so forth."

"Do you mean--he was stiff and hard?"

"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his
head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course
this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is
quite different. And the little doctor--what was his name?"

"Smithers?"

"Smithers it was--was quite wrong in trying t