es and mouth which
had risen in his mind, and added:

"But the character of the man is so changed that it may have suggestioned
me into feeling as if there were physical change in him, too."

"More than would be inevitable in any man in a couple of years. And now
as to his digestive organs."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Malling.

The apparent vagaries of his companion very seldom surprised him, but
this time he was completely taken aback.

"Are they what they were? Assuming, on your part, a knowledge of what
they were."

"I don't know either in what condition they are now, or in what condition
they were once."

"Ah! Now I must draw up a report about last night. I'll come for that cup
of tea to Minors--might almost as well have been Majors, even granting
the military flavor--about five."

Malling took his departure.

At a quarter to five he heard the click of the garden gate, and looking
out at the latticed window of the hall, he saw the professor walking
sidewise up the path, with a shawl round his shoulders. He went to let
him in, and took him into the tiny drawing-room.

"An odd shell for Harding!" observed the professor. "More suitable to a
bantam than to a Cochin-China!"

"It doesn't belong to him."

"Nor he to it. Very wise and right of him to go back to Onslow Gardens."

A maid brought in the tea, and the professor, spread strangely forth in a
small, chintz-covered arm-chair, enjoyed it while he talked about oysters
and oyster-beds. He was deeply interested in the oysters of Whitstable,
and held forth almost romantically on their birth and upbringing, the
fattening, the packing, the selling, and the eating of them--"with lemon,
not vinegar, mind! To eat vinegar with a Whitstable native is as vicious
as to offer a libation of catchup at the altar of a meadow mushroom just
picked up out of the dew."

Malling did not attempt to turn his mind from edibles. The professor had
to be let alone. When tea was finished and cleared away, he observed:

"And now, Malling, what is your view? Do you look upon it as a case of
transferred personality? I rather gathered from your general tone that
you were mentally drifting in that direction."

"But are there such cases? Of double transfer, I mean?"

"Personally I have never verified one. When you spoke of the reverend
gentlemen for the first time, I said, 'Study the link!' There will be
development in the link if--all the rest of it."

"There has been developme