just the same as what you saw last night!"

"Evidently."

"Did it sound to you"--there was a little awed tremor in her voice that
I found very appealing--"did it sound to you like a person who'd lost
his MIND?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know at all what to make of it."

"He couldn't have been"--her eyes grew very wide--"intoxicated!"

"No. I'm sure it wasn't that."

"Then _I_ don't know what to make of it, either. All that wild talk
about 'Bill Hammersley' and 'Simpledoria' and spring-boards in Scotland
and--"

"And an eleven-foot jump," I suggested.

"Why, there's no more a 'Bill Hammersley,'" she cried, with a gesture of
excited emphasis, "than there is a 'Simpledoria'!"

"So it appears," I agreed.

"He's lived there all alone," she said, solemnly, "in that big house, so
long, just sitting there evening after evening all by himself, never
going out, never reading anything, not even thinking; but just sitting
and sitting and sitting and SITTING--Well," she broke off, suddenly,
shook the frown from her forehead, and made me the offer of a dazzling