fortnight's attendance at a gymnasium under the supervision of Professor
Schneipp, the Bavarian Hercules; I had practiced the most approved
'knock-outs' known to my instructor, the famous pugilist, Melchizedeck
Cohen (popularly known as 'Slimy' Cohen); I had given up an hour a day
to studying the management of the concussor with the aid of a
punching-ball; the alarms were ready for fixing, and I even had the
address of an undoubtedly disreputable housemaid, when a most unexpected
thing happened. I got a premature bite. A fellow actually walked into
the trap without troubling me to set it.

"It befell thus. I had gone to bed rather early and fallen asleep at
once, but about one o'clock I awoke with that unmistakable completeness
that heralds a sleepless night. I lit my candle-lamp and looked round for
the book that I had been reading in the evening, and then I remembered
that I had left it in the museum. Now that book had interested me
deeply. It contained the only lucid description that I had met with of
the Mundurucú Indians and their curious method of preserving the severed
heads of their enemies; a method by which the head--after removal of the
bones--was shrunk until it was no larger than a man's fist.

"I got up, and, taking my lamp and keys, made my way to the museum wing
of the house, which opened out of the dining-room. I found the book,
but, instead of returning immediately, lingered in the museum, looking
about the great room and at the unfinished collection and gloomily
recalling its associations. The museum was a gift from my wife. She had
built it and the big laboratory soon after we were married and many a
delightful hour we had spent in it together, arranging the new specimens
in the cases. I did not allow her to work in the evil-smelling
laboratory, but she had a collection of her own, of land and fresh-water
shells (which were cleaner to handle than the bones); and I was pulling