I   HAVE given much and earnest thought to the subject," said Mr. Langley, blinking his weak eyes nervously; "and I am now comforted by absolute belief in the theory which my speculations have led me to adopt as final."

      "That is very satisfactory, no doubt," said Dr. Edwards. "Is the theory an original one?"

      "Perhaps not altogether original in the fundamental idea," returned the weak-eyed gentleman, "but I have never met, nor read of anyone who held just precisely my own views, without some little shades of difference to mar the completeness of the conception."

      "Let's have them," said Dr. Edwards cheerily. "The views, I mean, not the differences."

      "But I have already entered into them in detail," said Mr. Langley, looking as hard as the condition of his eyes would allow at the doctor, who had been up all night with a bad case, and had been enjoying a comfortable little doze through the lost details. The doctor blushed.

      "Yes, yes," he said, in guilty confusion; "but what I want now is a brief summary — a neat synopsis, to bear the whole in on my mind in a condensed and portable form."

      "Well, then, shortly and concisely, my belief is that after death our souls will animate bodies similar to those which have suffered under our hands in the present life ——"

      "You don't mean to say that I am to be all my own patients?" interrupted Dr. Edwards, becoming quite wideawake.

      Mr. Langley smiled with an air of benevolent superiority.

      "No," he said; "pain inflicted for necessary and legitimate ends cannot call for punishment. In your ease it is probable that your ego will inhabit only forms of lower animals, and so forth; for I will venture to affirm, from my intimate knowledge of your amiable character, that you have never needlessly wounded either the body or mind of a human being."

      "I believe I have treated the lower animals fairly well," objected the doctor. "Even in the cause of science I have always hated cruelty, and been particularly free with the chloroform."

      "Have you never taken the life of a bird or animal in sport, or of an insect in impatience?" asked Mr. Langley solemnly.

      "No," answered Dr. Edwards, with positive emphasis. "When I attended the out-patients in my younger days, I used to smother myself in 'Keating,' and the insects would not come near me at any price" — Mr. Langley made a grimace — "and as for sport, I never went in for it at any time of my life. Leisure was wanting, even if inclination had been present."

      "Then you have killed absolutely nothing; not even a spider, nor a — a rat?"

      "Well, now that you mention it, I believe I did murder a spider only this morning. The brute let himself down on the top of my head when I was shaving. An unfortunate bachelor's room is never free from cobwebs. And you are right about the rat. I shot an old sinner once to oblige my sister when I was staying in her house. But I shot it, mind you. I didn't set a trap for it, nor worry it with a terrier. On the whole, I don't think your theory has any terrors for me; so, for that very reason, you may have hopes of claiming me as a disciple one of these days, when I have time to give my full attention to the subject. By the way, are you a Chela, and have you got a Mahatma to revere?"

      "I have, indeed, explained myself ill if you confound my simple belief with the theosophical acceptation of reincarnation. I merely substitute metempsychosis, limited by the conditions mentioned, for your orthodox ideas of future punishment. Nothing can be clearer than ——"

      "The surgery bell!" exclaimed the doctor. "You must excuse me, my dear fellow. Turn up for dinner at half-past seven, and good-bye until then."

      Mr. Langley, who was spending a few days in town with his brother-in-law, made his appearance punctually in the dining-room that evening, and lost no time in recurring to his pet theory. He rode his hobby straight through each course, and through several glasses of Dr. Edwards's excellent wine; and continued to ride it until the doctor smoked his last pipe and went to bed in much weariness of spirit.

      He felt very tired, and rather ill that night, as a poor overworked doctor well might. He had been doing too much of late; and he was unduly depressed and nervous about his own state of health. He lay down on his comfortable spring mattress made with the newest improvements, feeling very uncomfortable indeed, and with little hope of repose.

      "I shall have an examination of my own case to-morrow," he thought. "I could discover nothing last time, and yet I feel convinced that my heart is unsound. I might drop off in my sleep any night — to-night! With a little rest I might pull round; but how can I get rest with such a press of work outside, and that crazy husband of Eleanor's inside, always ready to talk a hole through an iron pot? Can't the man see I don't care half a straw for him and his departed spirits? I must get rid of him at any price, or he will send me on the journey to find out all about it. All, my heart! It is all over with me this time!"

      The poor man started weakly as his heart gave a great bound — and stopped. A deadly languor, a horrible powerlessness overwhelmed his frame; but, mentally clear to the last, he found himself calmly observing the sensation of ceasing to exist. Oblivion followed; and then — horror of horrors! — he was crawling along a ceiling on eight legs — or thereabouts: it did not seem possible to count them accurately.

      He reached the corner, and made an unexceptionable cobweb there, greatly admiring his own proficiency in the art; and he was just proceeding to breakfast on a fat little house-fly which he had caught in it, when a chambermaid came in with a broom, and swept him out of his coign of vantage.

      He curled up all his legs, and lay for dead on the floor; so the girl, who was an ignorant young person, did not kill him, thinking she had done so already, but merely brushed him into the dust-pan, and carried him on to the next room that she visited in the course of her morning perambulations. Here he found means to escape, and lay low until the maid departed, when he immediately began to travel up towards the ceiling again. He tried to calculate how many times his own height he had fallen, and to realise the extraordinary fact that he was quite uninjured; but he found himself unable to think very connectedly about anything, and began to observe the details of the room, which seemed familiar.

      A middle-aged gentleman in a dressing-gown entered presently from an adjoining bedroom, took up a little can of hot water which the hostile maid had left there, and set about shaving himself.

      Dr. Edwards, in his new body, stood on the ceiling directly over the looking-glass, and was able to take note of a small bald spot on the top of this gentleman's head. It possessed some mysterious attraction for him, and he could no longer give his attention to anything else. All his faculties became absorbed in a great desire to reach the little bald spot, and stand on it. There was nothing to hinder him. If he wanted a rope to let himself down by, he could make it; and he did so.

      Very gradually he descended, pausing sometimes to make sure that he was unobserved; but the owner of the bald spot was completely taken up with his shaving, and noticed nothing higher than his own chin. The rope lengthened, the spider-doctor dropped lower and lower, and finally reached the goal of his ambition. He stood on a little pink oasis in a desert of sandy hair, and was conscious of a ridiculous aspiration for feathers. He wanted to clap his wings and crow, he was so delighted.

"THE SPIDER-DOCTOR DROPPED LOWER AND LOWER"

      Then he made a gentle movement with his various legs, the head jerked, the razor made a gash, the man cried out, brought his hand to bear on the bald spot with much violence; and — again oblivion.

      A little later he was sitting on a shelf in a store-room that he had certainly seen before. This time he had only four legs — with a tail thrown in — and he was eating the end of a tallow candle.

      "Horrible!" he thought. "Langley was right, though I always thought him such an ass. I am a rat. And I enjoy tallow."

      He made a good meal, and modestly retired when he heard the key turn in the lock. It was his sisters voice that broke on the silence of that capacious store-room, and he knew that he had heard words very like these from her once before.

      "The servants' candles are all gnawed and spoilt again," she cried. "That rat's keep costs me three shillings a week at the very least. Do help me to hunt him out, John!"

      "Not I," answered Mr. Langley's voice from without. "Better call your brother. I dare say he does not mind that sort of thing."

      "What meanness!" reflected the hidden listener. "Langley does not want to be a rat himself, but he does not mind letting another fellow in for it."

      He travelled sadly through a thick wall, perforated by a narrow passage which finally conducted him to a cellar, into the darkness of which he peered, with his head thrust out of a small hole in the corner.

      Again the grating of a key!

      There was plenty of time for retreat, but he remained obstinately still, scorning to fly from his fate. He knew it was coming, for he had acted in this scene before, only performing a different part.

      The door was thrown open; he scurried across the floor of the cellar as a flood of light burst into it; there was a loud report, and ——

      "If you please, sir, would you be good enough to wake? That's Mrs. Goldsmith's coachman a-knocking down the door. The old lady must be took bad again, and you not so much as dressed.
 

      "Sleep well last night?" inquired Mr. Langley at the breakfast table.

      "Eight solid hours. Only dreamt a little towards morning," answered the doctor. "But I saw a patient before you were out of bed. Nothing the matter with the old lady except nerves; and I shall be suffering from the same complaint myself if I don't take a holiday; so I shall just leave the patients to Finch, and run down to Eleanor for a week."

      And Mr. Langley told his wife privately that it was indeed time her poor brother took a rest, for there could be little doubt that his mind was suffering.

      "Suppose you both take a rest," said Eleanor. "I am sure you need it too, my dear."

M. PENROSE.