in his life he had belonged to the medical profession.

"The best physicians I ever met," he once observed, "are the Callavayas of
the Andes--if the preservation and prolongation of human life is the test
of medical skill. Among the Callavayas the period of youth is thirty
years; a man is not held to be a man until he reaches fifty, and he only
begins to be old at a hundred."

"Was it among the Callavayas that you learned the secret of long life, Mr.
Fortescue?" I asked.

"Perhaps," he answered, with one of his peculiar smiles; and then he
started me by saying that he would never be a "lean and slippered
pantaloon." When health and strength failed him he should cease to live.

"You surely don't mean that you will commit suicide?" I exclaimed, in
dismay.

"You may call it what you like. I shall do as the Fiji Islanders and some
tribes of Indians do, in similar circumstances--retire to a corner and
still the beatings of my heart by an effort of will."

"But is that possible?"

"I have seen it done, and I have done it myself--not, of course, to the
point of death, but so far as to simulate death. I once saved my life in
that way."

"Was that when you were hunted, Mr. Fortescue?"