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surrender than assent, and the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front teeth. “I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment.” And with flying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.

“My dear sir,” he said, in a quite affectionate manner, “I do not mind telling you—you are such a very hopeful case—you understand so well the scientific point of view; and I don’t like to see you bothered by the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest cases of pure idée fixe that we have. It’s very sad, and I’m afraid utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody”—and the doctor lowered his voice confidentially—“he tells everybody that two people have taken his yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent.”

Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel-path, and called out: “Oh, I can’t stand this. Really——”

“I know, I know,” said the psychologist, mournfully; “it is a most melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under a heading by itself—Perdina-