"When, soon after my marriage," resumed Mr. Drelincourt, "I furnished the Cot--which, some years before, had been tenanted by my father's gamekeeper--and fitted up a couple of its rooms as a laboratory, I had a double object in view. First of all, I wanted a place where I could prosecute my experiments free from the interruptions and annoyances to which I was subjected at the Towers; and, secondly, because it would be a haven of refuge to which I could escape at any time when matters at home had become so insupportable that I felt I must get away from them for a while lest I should go mad.

"Well, five days ago I left the Towers and took up my quarters at the Cot. It was after a scene with my wife of more than ordinary violence. As you know, I some time ago made old Margery Trant a fixture at the Cot, so that she might be on the spot to look after my meals and what not. On previous occasions when I have made the place my temporary home, I have always been able to plunge into my experiments with a vast feeling of relief. Grateful to me was the sense of solitude and of isolation from all my kind. Even you, Rodd, never intruded upon me at such times.

"This time, however, I could not settle down to anything. My mind was upset as it had never been before. The discovery of Kate's treachery weighed me down like a hideous nightmare from which I could not free myself. For the first time my experiments had become distasteful to me. My laboratory was as a temple of despair. I spent my days out of doors, sometimes on horseback, at other times on foot, keeping as far as possible from the haunts of men, and only returning to the Cot to eat and sleep when mind and body alike refused to hold out any longer.

"It had been dark some hours when I got back last night. I had taken Favorita for a twenty miles' stretch across the downs, and she was as tired as I was. After supping on a biscuit and a glass of Madeira, I lay down, without undressing, on the couch in my study, and a few minutes later fell asleep. The next thing I knew was that I was broad awake--but where, think you? In the library at the Towers! Yes, so far as regarded any waking consciousness on my part, there was no perceptible interval of time between the moment of my closing my eyes in sleep at the Cot and that of my opening them at the Towers. But you have already surmised the truth. I had been walking in my sleep; a habit to which, you know full well, I have been more or less subject from my youth upward.

"There, then, I was, suddenly brought back to conscious life by the merest accident. In my sleep, in obedience to 

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