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original mystery.

"'For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill,
sometimes delirious, sometimes hysterical, that a
nurse had been employed to sit up with her at night.
On the third night after Brunton's disappearance, the
nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely, had
dropped into a nap in the arm-chair, when she woke in
the early morning to find the bed empty, the window
open, and no signs of the invalid. I was instantly
aroused, and, with the two footmen, started off at
once in search of the missing girl. It was not
difficult to tell the direction which she had taken,
for, starting from under her window, we could follow
her footmarks easily across the lawn to the edge of
the mere, where they vanished close to the gravel path
which leads out of the grounds. The lake there is
eight feet deep, and you can imagine our feelings when
we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came
to an end at the edge of it.

"'Of course, we had the drags at once, and set to work
to recover the remains, but no trace of the body could
we find. On the other hand, we brought to the surface
an object of a most unexpected kind. It was a linen
bag which contained within it a mass of old rusted and
discolored metal and several dull-colored pieces of
pebble or glass. This strange find was all that we
could get from the mere, and, although we made every
possible search and inquiry yesterday, we know nothing
of the fate either of Rachel Howells or of Richard
Brunton. The county police are at their wits' end,
and I have come up to you as a last resource.'

"You can imagine, Watson, with what eagerness I
listened to this extraordinary sequence of events, and
endeavored to piece them together, and to devise some
common thread upon which they might all hang. The
butler was gone. The maid was gone. The maid had
loved the butler, but had afterwards had cause to hate
him. She was of Welsh blood, fiery and passionate.
She had been terribly excited immediately after his
disappearance. She had flung into the lake a bag
containing some curious contents. These were all
factors which had to be taken into consideration, and
yet none of them got quite to the heart of the matter.
What was the starting-point of this chain of events?
There lay the end of this tangled line.

"'I must see that paper, Musgrave,' said I, 'which
this butler of your thought it worth his while to
consult, even at the risk of the loss of his place.'

"'It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of
ours,' he answered. 'But it has at least the saving
grace of antiquity to excuse it. I have a copy of the
questions and answers here if you care to run your eye
over them.'

"He handed me the very paper which I have here,
Watson, and this is the strange catechism to which
each Musgrave had to submit when he came to man's
estate. I will read you the questions and answers as
they stand.

"'Whose was it?'

"'His who is gone.'

"'Who shall have it?'

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