the servant that his master was far from
well, and that he should make a point of
frequently looking into his room.

My own arrangements I made with a
view to being quite secure from interruption.

I merely called at my lodgings, and,
with a travelling-desk and carpet-bag, set
off in a hackney-carriage for an inn about
two miles out of town, called The Horns,
a very quiet and comfortable house, with
good thick walls. And there I resolved,
without the possibility of intrusion or
distraction, to devote some hours of the night,
in my comfortable sitting-room, to Mr.
Jennings's case, and so much of the
morning as it might require.

(There occurs here a careful note of Dr.
Hesselius's opinion upon the case, and of
the habits, dietary, and medicines which
he prescribed. It is curious—some people
would say mystical. But on the whole I
doubt whether it would sufficiently
interest a reader of the kind I am likely to
meet with to warrant its being here
reprinted. This whole letter was plainly
written at the inn in which he had hid
himself for the occasion. The next letter
is dated from his town lodgings.)

I left town for the inn where I slept
last night at half-past nine, and did not
arrive at my room in town until one o'clock
this afternoon. I found a letter in Mr.
Jennings's hand upon my table. It had
not come by post, and on inquiry, I learned
that Mr. Jennings's servant had brought
it, and on learning that I was not to return
until to-day, and that no one could tell
him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable,
and said that his orders from his
master were that he was not to return
without an answer.

I opened the letter, and read:

"Dear Dr. Hesselius. It is here. You
had not been an hour gone when it
returned. It is speaking. It knows all that
has happened. It knows everything—it
knows you, and is frantic and atrocious.
It reviles. I send you this. It knows
every word I have written—I write. This
I promised, and I therefore write, but I
fear very confused, very incoherently. I
am so interrupted, disturbed.
            "Ever yours, sincerely yours,
                  "ROBERT LYNDER JENNINGS."

"When did this come?" I asked.

"About eleven last night; the man was
here again, and has been here three times
to-day. The last time is about an hour
since."

Thus answered, and with the notes I
had made upon his case in my pocket, I
was, in a few minutes, driving out to
Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings.

I by no means, as you perceive, despaired
of Mr. Jennings's case. He had himself
remembered and applied, though quite in a
mistaken way, the principle which I lay
down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and
which governs all such cases. I was about
to apply it in earnest. I was profoundly
interested, and very anxious to see and
examine him while the "enemy" was
actually present.

I drove up to the sombre house, and
ran up the steps, and knocked. The door,
in a little time, was opened by a tall woman
in black silk. She looked ill, and as if she
had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard
my question, but she did not answer. She
turned her face away, extending her hand
hurriedly towards two men who were
coming down-stairs; and thus having, as
it were, tacitly made me over to them, she
passed through a side-door hastily and
shut it.

The man who was nearest the hall, I
at once accosted, but being now close to
him, I was shocked to see that both his
hands were covered with blood.

I drew back a little, and the man passing
down-stairs merely said in a low tone,
"Here's the servant, sir."

The servant had stopped on the stairs,
confounded and dumb at seeing me. He
was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief,
and it was steeped in blood.

"Jones, what is it, what has happened?"
I asked, while a sickening suspicion
overpowered me.

The man asked me to come up to the
lobby. I was beside him in a moment, and
frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes,
he told me the horror which I already half
guessed.

His master had made away with himself.

I went up-stairs with him to the room—
what I saw there I won't tell you. He had
cut his throat with his razor. It was a
frightful gash. The two men had laid him
upon the bed and composed his limbs. It
had happened, as the immense pool of blood
on the floor declared, at some distance
between the bed and the window. There was
carpet round his bed, and a carpet under
his dressing-table, but none on the rest of
the floor, for the man said he did not like
carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre,