lytical Chemist again bends and whispers.

Mortimer stares at him, and unfolds the paper. Reads it, reads it twice,
turns it over to look at the blank outside, reads it a third time.

'This arrives in an extraordinarily opportune manner,' says Mortimer
then, looking with an altered face round the table: 'this is the
conclusion of the story of the identical man.'

'Already married?' one guesses.

'Declines to marry?' another guesses.

'Codicil among the dust?' another guesses.

'Why, no,' says Mortimer; 'remarkable thing, you are all wrong. The
story is completer and rather more exciting than I supposed. Man's
drowned!'

Chapter 3

ANOTHER MAN

As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering
staircase, Mortimer, following them forth from the dining-room, turned
into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded,
and requested to see the messenger who had brought the paper. He was a
boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked
at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold
frame than procession, and more carving than country.

'Whose writing is this?'

'Mine, sir.'

'Who told you to write it?'

'My father, Jesse Hexam.'

'Is it he who found the body?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What is your father?'

The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had
involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the
right leg of his trousers, 'He gets his living along-shore.'

'Is it far?'

'Is which far?' asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road
to Canterbury.

'To your father's?'

'It's a goodish stretch, sir. I come up in a cab, and the cab's waiting
to be paid. We could go back in it before you paid it, if you liked.
I went first to your office, according to the direction of the papers
found in the pockets, and there I see nobody but a chap of about my age
who sent me on here.'

There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and
uncompleted civilization. His voice was hoarse and coarse, and his face
was coarse, and his stunted figure was coarse; but he was cleaner than
other boys of his type; and his writing, though large and round,
was good; and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened
curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks
at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

'Were any means taken, do