through that short gloomy afternoon.

“I’m sorry things are so bad as they are,” the Doctor was saying, as he handed the invalid the big blue envelope, for he had, an hour before, told him the truth. “You ought to have had advice long ago.”

The dying man smiled faintly and shook his head.

“I was warned in Stockholm,” he answered in a low tone. “But I didn’t heed. I—I was a fool.”

The Doctor sighed. What could he say? He had recognised that the poor fellow was already beyond human aid. He had probably been suffering from the affection of the heart for the past six or seven years—perhaps more.

“And you are certain?” asked the ugly little man at last, again taking the thin, bony hand in his. “Are you quite certain that you wish to send no message to anybody?”

For a few seconds the prostrate man struggled hard to speak.

“No,” he succeeded in gasping at last. “No message—to—anybody.”

The Doctor pursed his lips at the rebuff. The eccentricity of the stranger had become more marked in those moments of finality.

His thin, nerveless fingers were fumbling with the bulky envelope, which seemed to contain a quantity of folded papers.

“Doctor,” he whispered at last, “I—I want to burn—all these—all—every one of them. Burn them entirely.”

“As you wish, my dear friend,” responded the hunchback, eyeing the envelope eagerly, and wondering what it might contain. “I’ll put a match to them in the stove yonder.”

The invalid, by dint of great effort, managed to move himself so that his eyes could fall upon the little door in the round iron stove, in which, however, no fire was burning, even though the day was bitterly cold.

Yet he hesitated, hesitated as though he dared not trust the hungry little man who had befriended him.

“Do you wish them destroyed?” the Doctor again inquired.

The dying man nodded, at the same moment raising his finger and motioning that he could not speak.

Diamond waited. He saw that the patient was vainly endeavouring to articulate some words.

For several moments there was a dead silence.

At last the nameless man spoke again, very softly and indistinctly. Indeed, the Doctor was compelled to bend low to catch the words:

“Take them,” he said. “Take them—and burn them in the stove. Mind—destroy every one.”

“Certainly I will,” answered the other. “Give them to me, and you shall see me burn them. I’ll do so there—before your eyes.”

The man held the envelope in his dying grip. He still hesitated. His eyes were fixed upon the papers wistfully, as though filled with poignant regret at a mission unaccomplished.

“Ah!” he gasped with difficulty. “To think that this is the end—the end of a lifetime’s study and struggle! Death defeats me, vanquishes me—as it has vanquished every other man who has striven to learn the secret.”

Diamond stood listening in wonder and curiosity. He noticed the dying man’s reluctance to destroy the papers.

Perhaps he would succumb, and leave them undestroyed! What secret could they contain?

There was a long silence. The grey light over the thousands of chimney-pots was fast fading into gloom. The room was darkening.

The patient lay motionless as one dead, yet his dull eyes were still open. In his hand he still held his treasured envelope.

Again Diamond spoke, but the man with a secret made no reply. He only raised his wan hand, and shook his head sadly, indicating inability to speak.

The queer little Doctor bent once more closer to the stranger and saw that the end was near. He was hoping against hope that the man would expire before he had strength to order the destruction of those documents, whatever they were. The mysterious statements of the dying man had indicated that the papers in question contained some remarkable secret, and naturally his curiosity had been aroused.

During those three brief days of their acquaintance he had, in vain, tried to form some conclusion as to who the stranger might be. At first he had believed him to be a broken-down medical man like himself. But that surmise had been quickly negatived. He was a professional man without a doubt, but he had carefully concealed even his profession as well as his name.

The doctor had re-seated himself in the rickety rush-bottomed chair at the bedside, and sat in patience for the end, as he had sat beside hundreds of other dying men and women in the course of his career.

The patient breathed heavily, and again stirring uneasily, cast a longing look at the glass of lemonade upon the little table near by. Diamond recognised his wish, and held the tumbler to the man’s parched lips.

The dying stranger motioned, and the Doctor bent his head until his ear was near the other’s mouth.

“Doctor,” he managed to whisper after great difficulty, “it’s no use. There’s no hope! Therefore will you take them to the stove—and—and burn them—burn them all!”

“Certainly I will,” was the Doctor’s reply, rising and slowly taking the envelope from the prostrate man’s reluctant fingers.

He felt crisp papers within as he turned his back upon the dying man and bent down to the stove, placing himself between the invalid’s line of vision and the stove itself.

A moment later, however, he opened the stove-door, placed the envelope within, and applied a match to it.

Next moment a blood-red light fell across the darkening room upon the pallid face lying on the pillow.

A pair of dull, anxious, deep-set eyes watched the flames leap up and quickly die down again, watched the crinkling tinder as the sparks died out one by one—watched until Diamond stirred up the charred folios in order that every one should be consumed.

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.