e water and stooped over
it more closely to examine its contents. Apparently the examination
yielded no very conclusive results, for it was accompanied by a series
of rather dubious grunts.

At length the officer stood up, and turning to me with a genial but foxy
smile, held out the sieve for my inspection.

"Like to see what we have found, Doctor?" said he.

I thanked him and stooped over the sieve. It contained the sort of
litter of twigs, skeleton leaves, weed, pond-snails, dead shells, and
fresh-water mussels that one would expect to strain out from the mud of
an ancient pond; but in addition to these there were three small bones
which at the first glance gave me quite a start until I saw what they
were.

The inspector looked at me inquiringly. "H'm?" said he.

"Yes," I replied. "Very interesting."

"Those will be human bones, I fancy; h'm?"

"I should say so, undoubtedly," I answered.

"Now," said the inspector, "could you say, off-hand, which finger those
bones belong to?"

I smothered a grin (for I had been expecting this question), and
answered:

"I can say off-hand that they don't belong to any finger. They are the
bones of the left great toe."

The inspector's jaw dropped. "The deuce they are!" he muttered. "H'm. I
thought they looked a bit stout."

"I expect," said I, "that if you go through the mud close to where this
came from you'll find the rest of the foot."

The plain-clothes man proceeded at once to act on my suggestion, taking
the sieve with him to save time. And sure enough, after filling it twice
with the mud from the bottom of the pool, the entire skeleton of the
foot was brought to light.

"Now you're happy, I suppose," said the inspector when I had checked the
bones and found them all present.

"I should be more happy," I replied, "if I knew what you were searching
for in this pond. You weren't looking for the foot, were you?"

"I was looking for anything that I might find," he answered. "I shall go
on searching until we have the whole body. I shall go through all the
streams and ponds around here, except Connaught Water. That I shall
leave to the last, as it will be a case of dredging from a boat and
isn't so likely as the smaller ponds. Perhaps the head will be there;
it's deeper than any of the others."

It now occurred to me that as I had learned all that I was likely to
learn, which was little enough, I might as well leave the inspector to
pursue his researches unembar