but had not referred to it, so far as I can remember, for months or
years. I know of no train of thought which led me to speak of it on that
particular day. I had never alluded to it before in that company, nor
had I ever spoken of it with Mr. Rathbone.

I told this story over our teacups. Among the company at the table is a
young English girl. She seemed to be amused by the story. "Fancy!" she
said,--"how very very odd!" "It was a striking and curious coincidence,"
said the professor who was with us at the table. "As remarkable as two
teaspoons in one saucer," was the comment of a college youth who happened
to be one of the company. But the member of our circle whom the reader
will hereafter know as Number Seven, began stirring his tea in a nervous
sort of way, and I knew that he was getting ready to say something about
the case. An ingenious man he is, with a brain like a tinder-box, its
contents catching at any spark that is flying about. I always like to
hear what he says when his tinder brain has a spark fall into it. It
does not follow that because he is often wrong he may not sometimes be
right, for he is no fool. He treated my narrative very seriously.

The reader need not be startled at the new terms he introduces. Indeed, I
am not quite sure that some thinking people will not adopt his view of
the matter, which seems to have a degree of plausibility as he states and
illustrates it.

"The impulse which led you to tell that story passed directly from the
letter, which came charged from the cells of the cerebral battery of your
correspondent. The distance at which the action took place [the letter
was left on a shelf twenty-four feet from the place where I was sitting]
shows this charge to have been of notable intensity.