Then he turned slightly in his bed and, stretching forth his hand as though wishing to speak, drew a long, hard breath.

“And—and so—vanishes all my hope—my life,” the stranger managed to sob bitterly in a voice almost inaudible.

Again he sighed—a long-drawn sigh. And then—in the room, now almost dark, reigned a complete silence.

Death had entered there. The man with the secret had passed to that land which lies beyond human ken.

Chapter Two.

Describes the Doctor’s Doings.

Raymond Diamond’s unfortunate deformity had always been against his advancement in his profession.

The only son of old Doctor Diamond, a country practitioner of the old school, in Norfolk, he had had a brilliant career at Edinburgh, and after some years of changeful life as a locum tenens had bought a partnership in a practice on the outskirts of Birmingham.

His partner turned out to be a rogue who had misrepresented facts, and six months afterwards absconded to America. Diamond, however, betrayed a sharp resourcefulness. He advertised the practice in the Lancet, and when a prospective purchaser came to view it, he hired fourteen or fifteen men to come into the surgery, one after the other, and pay fees. Such an impression did this ruse cause upon the newly married medico, who came from London to investigate, that he bought it at once, and Diamond netted nearly twice the sum he originally gave for his partnership.

Finding that his deformity precluded him from forming anything like a lucrative practice, he accepted a berth as ship’s doctor in the P&O service, and for some years sailed the Indian and China seas.

Back in London again, he drifted from one suburban practice to another, doing locum work, and at last built up a semblance of a practice in a cheap new suburban district down at Catford.

Even there, however, his ugliness proved much against him, and at last he was forced to retire into a Northamptonshire village, where he and his wife eked out a modest living by adopting children upon yearly payments.

It was not a very creditable means of livelihood, yet the several children beneath their cottage roof were all well treated and well cared for. And after all, Raymond Diamond, a brilliant man in many 

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