this movement was abnormal--_prestissimo_, in fact, if we indulge our
musical vocabulary. But the instrumentation would have seemed less
surprising to Sally had she known the lengths her mother had gone in
the proffer of a substantial guarantee for Fenwick's personal honesty.
This seeming rashness did not transpire at the time; had it done so,
it might have appeared unintelligible--to Sally, at any rate. She
would not have been surprised at herself for backing the interests of
a man nearly electrocuted over her half-crown, but why should her
mother endorse her _protege_ so enthusiastically?

It is perhaps hardly necessary for us to dwell on the unsuccessful
attempts that were made to recover touch with other actors on the
stage of Fenwick's vanished past. Advertisement--variously worded--in
the second column of the "Times," three times a week for a month,
produced no effect. Miss Sally frequently referred with satisfaction
to the case of John Williams, reported among the Psychical Researches
of the past years, in which a man who vanished in England was found
years after carrying on a goods-store in Chicago under another name,
with a new wife and family, having utterly forgotten the first half of
his life and all his belongings. Her mother seemed only languidly
interested in this illustration, and left the active discussion of the
subject chiefly to Sally, who speculated endlessly on the whole of the
story; without, however, throwing any fresh light on it--unless
indeed, the Chicago man could be considered one. And the question
naturally arose, as long as his case continued to hold out hopes of
a sudden return of memory, and until we were certain his condition was
chronic, why go to expense and court publicity? By the time he was
safely installed in his situation at the wine-merchant's, the idea of
a police-inquiry, application to the magistrates, and so forth, had
become distasteful to all concerned, and to none more so than Fenwick
himself.

When Dr. Vereker, acting on his own account, and unknown to Mrs.
Nightingale and Fenwick, made confidential reference to Scotland Yard,
that Yard smiled cynically over the Chicago storekeeper, and expressed
the opinion that probably Fenwick's game was a similar game, and that
things of this sort were usually some game. The doctor observed that
he knew without being told that nine such cases out of ten had human
rascality at the bottom of them, but that he had consulted that Yard