though trying to escape. When they had come out on the roadway Adam held
the mongoose tight to him, and, lifting his hat to his companion, moved
quickly towards Lesser Hill; he and Lady Arabella lost sight of each
other in the thickening gloom.

When Adam got home, he put the mongoose in his box, and locked the door
of the room. The other mongoose--the one from Nepaul--was safely locked
in his own box, but he lay quiet and did not stir. When he got to his
study Sir Nathaniel came in, shutting the door behind him.

"I have come," he said, "while we have an opportunity of being alone, to
tell you something of the Caswall family which I think will interest you.
There is, or used to be, a belief in this part of the world that the
Caswall family had some strange power of making the wills of other
persons subservient to their own. There are many allusions to the
subject in memoirs and other unimportant works, but I only know of one
where the subject is spoken of definitely. It is _Mercia and its
Worthies_, written by Ezra Toms more than a hundred years ago. The
author goes into the question of the close association of the then Edgar
Caswall with Mesmer in Paris. He speaks of Caswall being a pupil and the
fellow worker of Mesmer, and states that though, when the latter left
France, he took away with him a vast quantity of philosophical and
electric instruments, he was never known to use them again. He once made
it known to a friend that he had given them to his old pupil. The term
he used was odd, for it was 'bequeathed,' but no such bequest of Mesmer
was ever made known. At any rate the instruments were missing, and never
turned up."

A servant came into the room to tell Adam that there was some strange
noise coming from the locked room into which he had gone when he came in.