ion so long as there was no emergency to try him,
now showed the dormant reserve of manly spirit and decision in his
nature as he had never (in my experience) shown it yet. He led me into
the garden. We had kept our cab: it was waiting for us at the gate.

On our way home Benjamin produced his note-book.

"What's to be done, my dear, with the gibberish that I have written
here?" he said.

"Have you written it all down?" I asked, in surprise.

"When I undertake a duty, I do it," he answered. "You never gave me the
signal to leave off--you never moved your chair. I have written every
word of it. What shall I do? Throw it out of the cab window?"

"Give it to me."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I don't know yet. I will ask Mr. Playmore."

CHAPTER XLI. MR. PLAYMORE IN A NEW CHARACTER.

BY that night's post--although I was far from being fit to make the
exertion--I wrote to Mr. Playmore, to tell him what had taken place, and
to beg for his earliest assistance and advice.

The notes in Benjamin's book were partly written in shorthand, and were,
on that account, of no use to me in their existing condition. At my
request, he made two fair copies. One of the copies I inclosed in my
letter to Mr. Playmore. The other I laid by me, on my bedside table,
when I went to rest.

Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night, I read
and re-read the last words which had dropped from Miserrimus Dexter's
lips. Was it possible to interpret them to any useful purpose? At the
very outset they seemed to set interpretation at defiance. After trying
vainly to solve the hopeless problem, I did at last what I might as well
have done at first--I threw down the paper in despair. Where were my
bright visions of discovery and success now? Scattered to the winds!
Was there the faintest chance of the stricken man's return to reason? I
remembered too well what I had seen to hope for it. The closing lines of
the medical report which I had read in Mr. Playmore's office recurred
to my memory in the stillness of the night--"When the catastrophe has
happened, his friends can entertain no hope of his cure: the balance
once lost, will be lost for life."

The confirmation of that terrible sentence was not long in reaching
me. On the next morning the gardener brought a note containing the
information which the doctor had promised to give me on the previous
day.

Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel were still where Benjamin and