l experience, and have heard from
others, from men of age, sagacity, and acquaintance with the greatest
affairs, instances in which people have been distinctly seen by sane,
healthy, and honourable witnesses, in places and circumstances where it
was (as we say) "physically impossible" that they should have been, and
where they certainly were not themselves aware of having been. That is
why human testimony seems to me to establish no more, in certain
circumstances, than a highly probable working hypothesis--a hypothesis on
which, of course, we are bound to act.

There is little more to tell. By dint of careful nursing, poor Allen was
enabled to travel; he reached Mentone, and there the mistral ended him.
He was a lonely man, with no kinsfolk; his character was cleared among
the people who knew him best; the others have forgotten him. Nobody can
be injured by this explanation of his silence when called on to prove his
innocence, and of his unusually successful vanishing from a society which
had never tried very hard to discover him in his retreat. He has lived
and suffered and died, and left behind him little but an incident in the
History of the Unexplained.

THE COMPLETE BUNGLER

SCENE I.--HAMPSHIRE

PISCATOR ANGLUS. PISCATOR SCOTUS

Scotus.--Well, now let's go to your sport of angling. Where, Master, is
your river?

Anglus.--Marry, 'tis here; mark you, this is the famous Test.

Scotus.--What, Master, this dry ditch? There be scarce three inches of
water in it.

Anglus.--Patience, Scholar, the water is in the meadows, or Master
Oakley, the miller, is holding it up. Nay, let us wait here some hour or
so till the water is turned on. Or perchance, Scholar, for the matter of
five shillings, Master Oakley will even raise his hatches, an you have a
crown about you.

Scotus.--I like not to part with my substance, but, as needs must, here,
Master, is the coin.

[Exit ANGLUS to the Mill. He returns.

Anglus.--Now, Scholar, said I not so? The water is turned on again, and,
lo you, at the tail of yonder stream, a fair trout is rising. You shall
see a touch of our craft.

[ANGLUS crawls on his belly into a tuft of nettles, where he kneels and
flicks his fly for about ten minutes.

Anglus.--Alas, he has ceased rising, and I am grievously entangled in
these nettles. Come, Scholar, but warily, lest ye fright my fish, and
now, disentangle my hook.

Scotus.--Here is your hook, but, marry, my fin