uestion we had better leave until we have seen the Chief
Constable at Plymouth. To publish the news here and now in Troy
would cause an infinite alarm, possibly an idle one. By the time we
reach Plymouth our friend may have reappeared, or at least disclosed
his whereabouts."

Alas! at Plymouth, where they arrived late that night, no news of the
missing one awaited them. Mrs. Basket, her face white as a sheet,
her ample body swathed in a red flannel dressing-gown, herself opened
the door to the travellers as soon as the chaise drew up. For hours
she had been expecting it, listening for the sounds of wheels.
Almost before the introductions were over she announced with tears
that she had nothing to tell.

For a while she turned her thoughts perforce from the disaster to the
business of making ready the bedrooms for her guests and preparing a
light supper. But the meal had not been in progress five minutes,
before, in the act of loading Miss Marty's plate, she sat back with a
gasp.

"Oh, and I was forgetting! Misfortunes, they say, never come singly,
and--would you believe it, my dear?--as I was walking in the garden
this afternoon, thinking to calm my poor brain, I happened to look at
the fish-pond and what do I see there but two of the gold-fish
floating with their chests uppermost!"

"Chests, madam?" queried Dr. Hansombody.

But sharp as his query was came a cry from Mr. Basket.
"The fish-pond?" He thrust back his chair, a terrible surmise
dawning in his eyes. "And the fish, you say, floating--"

"Chest uppermost," repeated Mrs. Basket, "and dead as dead."

"She _means_, on their backs," her husband explained parenthetically;
"a fashion de parlour, as the French would say. Did you examine the
pond? Heavens, Maria! did you examine the pond?"

"Elihu, you make my flesh creep! Why should I examine the pond?
You don't mean to tell me--"

"My shrimping-net! Don't sit shivering there, Maria, but bring me my
shrimping-net! And a lantern!" Mr. Basket caught up a
Sheffield-plated candle-sconce from the table, motioned the Doctor to
fetch along its fellow, and led the way out to the front garden.

The night outside was windless, but dark as the inside of a hat.

Their candles drew a dewy glimmer from the congregated statuary:
apparitions so ghostly that the Doctor scarcely repressed a cry of
terror. Mr. Basket advanced to the pond and set down his light on
the brink.

"A foot deep . . . only a foot