mentioning to you once a certain manuscript of strange interest--to
me at least and Rachel--which a brother of mine left behind him?"

"I remember it perfectly," answered the curate."

"It seems so to mingle with all I ever think on this question, that
I should much like, if you gentlemen would allow me, to read some
extracts from it."

Nothing could have been heartier than the assurance of both the men
that they could but be delighted to listen to anything he chose to
give them.

"I must first tell you, however," said Polwarth, "merely to protect
you from certain disturbing speculations, otherwise sure to present
themselves, that my poor brother was mad, and that what I now read
portions of seemed to him no play of the imagination, but a record
of absolute fact. Some parts are stranger and less intelligible than
others, but through it all there is abundance of intellectual
movement, and what seems to me a wonderful keenness to perceive the
movements and arrest the indications of an imagined consciousness."

As he spoke, the little man was opening a cabinet in which he kept
his precious things. He brought from it a good-sized quarto volume,
neatly bound in morocco, with gilt edges, which he seemed to handle
not merely with respect but with tenderness.

The heading of the next chapter is my own, and does not belong to
the manuscript.