"All this at the first sitting on the very morning the watch had arrived by post, no one but myself and a shorthand clerk, who happened to have been introduced for the first time at this sitting by me, and whose antecedents were well known to me, being present. "Having thus ostensibly got into communication through some means or other with what purported to be Uncle Jerry, whom I had indeed known slightly in his later years of blindness, but of whose early life I knew nothing, I pointed out to him that to make Uncle Robert aware of his presence it would be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood, all of which I would faithfully report. "He quite caught the idea, and proceeded during several successive sittings ostensibly to instruct Doctor Phinuit to mention a number of little things such as would enable his brother to recognize him. References to his blindness, illness, and main facts of his life were comparatively useless from my point of view; but these details of boyhood, two-thirds of a century ago, were utterly and entirely out of my ken. "'Uncle Jerry' recalled episodes such as swimming the creek when they were boys together, and running some risk of getting drowned; killing a cat in Smith's field; the possession of a small rifle, and of a long, peculiar skin, like a snakeskin, which he thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert. "All these facts have been more or less completely verified. But the interesting thing is that his twin brother, from whom I got the watch and with whom I was thus in correspondence, could not remember them all. He recollected something about swimming the creek, though he himself had merely looked on. He had a distinct recollection of having had the snakeskin, and of the box in which it was kept, though he did not know where it was then. But he altogether denied killing the cat, and could not recall Smith's field. "His memory, however, was decidedly failing him, and he was good enough to write to another brother, Frank, living in Cornwall, an old sea captain, and ask if he had any better remembrance of certain facts--of course not giving any inexplicable reason for asking. The result of this inquiry was triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith's field as a place near their home, where they used to play in Barking, Essex; and the killing of a cat by another brother was also recollected; while of the swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details were given, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy episode."