Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when,
so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most
appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There
was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the
schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary,
there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was
looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself
and exercising, as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of
taking certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when most
of the Rockland people had "retired," or, in vulgar language, "gone to
bed."

Dick Venner settled it, however, in his own mind, that Mr. Bernard
Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself. He even went so far as to
determine the precise hour, and the method in which the "rash act," as
it would undoubtedly be called in the next issue of "The Rockland
Weekly Universe," should be committed. Time,--_this evening._
Method,--asphyxia, by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking a great
liberty with a man to decide that he should become _felo de se_ without
his own consent. Such, however, was the decision of Mr. Richard Venner
with regard to Mr. Bernard Langdon.

If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner's inquest
to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, found suspended to the
branch of a tree somewhere within a mile of the Apollinean Institute.
The "Weekly Universe" would have a startling paragraph announcing a
"SAD EVENT!!!" which had "thrown the town into an intense state of
excitement. Mr. Barnard Langden, a well known teacher at the Apollinean
Institute, was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The
motive to the rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be