least degree.

"Did you have a pleasant passage?" he asked, after a brief pause. "The
ocean, I believe, is generally rough at this time of year."

"I felt a little squeamish for a day or two after leaving Melbourne," I
replied, "but I soon got over it, and it was not very bad even while it
lasted. I am a tolerably good sailor."

"And you have had no special ground of anxiety of late? At least not
until you received this wonderful letter"--he added, with a perceptible
contraction of his lips, as though trying to repress a smile.

Then I saw what he was driving at.

"Doctor," I exclaimed, with some exasperation in my tone--"pray dismiss
from your mind the idea that what I have told you is the result of
diseased imagination. I am as sane as you are. The letter itself
affords sufficient evidence that I am not quite such a fool as you take
me for."

"My dear boy, I don't take you for a fool at all, although you are a
little excited just at present. But I thought you said you returned the
letter to--ahem--your uncle."

For a moment I had forgotten that important fact. But I was not
altogether without evidence that I had not been the victim of a
disordered brain. My friend Gridley could corroborate the receipt of
the letter and its contents. My cousin could bear witness that I had
displayed an acquaintance with facts which I would not have been likely