barely thirty--at the
Bar whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a
strong suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to
speak to you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three
times, and was in one when he died."

The doctor looked grave.

"That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady
started?"

"Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he was
a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."

"That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to
son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the
recurrent mania the result of an accident."

"Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all
until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in
Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him with
the happiness of my daughter."

"Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to feel
sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr. Wedmore
would pay little attention to any but his own.

"Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more
about the lad's father. He and I were very old friends--chums from
boyhood, in fact. When he came back from America--where he went from a
lad's love of adventure--he made a good marriage from a monetary point
of view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse
way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did
very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat,
and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and
things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he
had done very well--made a lot of money by speculation--and was thinking
of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra
pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out
again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her
so much that she died shortly afterward. Of course, he had to be shut up
again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his
confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence. Now, both
Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he
turned out all wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve
months, that Horne was coming out again, he decam