The insistence of his self-pity chilled me, and I harked back to a
question he had not straightly answered.

"Tell me: Was it marked in your hands that you were not going to
pull that cord?"

Again he looked at his hands, and then, having pressed them for a
moment to his face, "It was marked very clearly," he answered, "in
THEIR hands."

Two or three days after this colloquy there had occurred to me in London
an idea--an ingenious and comfortable doubt. How was Laider to be sure
that his brain, recovering from concussion, had REMEMBERED what
happened in the course of that railway-journey? How was he to know
that his brain hadn't simply, in its abeyance, INVENTED all this for
him? It might be that he had never seen those signs in those hands.
Assuredly, here was a bright loophole. I had forthwith written to Laider,
pointing it out.

This was the letter which now, at my second visit, I had found
miserably pent on the letter-board. I remembered my promise to rescue
it. I arose from the retaining fireside, stretched my arms, yawned, and
went forth to fulfil my Christian purpose. There was no one in the hall.
The "shower" had at length ceased. The sun had positively come out,
and the front door had been thrown open in its honor. Everything along
the sea-front was beautifully gleaming, drying, shimmering. But I was
not to be diverted from my purpose. I went to the letter-board. And--my
letter was not there! Resourceful and plucky little thing--it had escaped!
I did hope it would not be captured and brought back. Perhaps the alarm
had already been raised by the tolling of that great bell which warns the