"When you make up the next parcel, stick in a few of the unlikeliest books. I don't want Paley's _Evidences of Christianity_: I have tackled that for my Little-Go, and, besides, we have plenty of 'em out here: but books about Ireland, and the Near East, and local government, and farm-labourers' wages, and the future life, and all that sort of thing. "Two nights ago, Polkinghorne got going on our chances in another world. Polkinghorne is a thoughtful man in his way, rising forty--don't know his religion. I had an idea somehow that he was interested in such things. But to my astonishment the boys took him up and were off in full cry. It appeared that each one had been nursing his own thoughts on the subject. The trouble was, none of us knew very much about it--" Otway, writing beneath the hurricane-lamp, had reached this point in his letter when young Barham exclaimed to the world at large: "Hallo! here's a tall story!" The C.O. looked up. So did Polkinghorne, from his Bible. Sammy held a torn sheet of newspaper. "Don't keep it to yourself, my son," said Otway, laying down his pen and leaning back, so that his face passed out of the inner circle of the lamplight. Sammy bent forward, pushed the paper nearer to this pool of light, smoothed it and read: "'Thames-side Mystery "'A Coroner's jury at C--, a 'village' on the south bank of the Thames, not a hundred miles below Gravesend--'" "Seems a lot of mystery about it already," observed Polkinghorne. "Don't they give the name of the village?" "No; they just call it 'C--,' and, what's more, they put 'village' into inverted commas. Don't know why: but there's a hint at the end." "Proceed." Sammy proceeded. "'--Was engaged yesterday in holding an inquest on the body of an unknown man, found lying at highwater mark in a creek some way below the village. A local constable had discovered the body: but neither the officer who attended nor the river police could afford any clue to the deceased's identity. Medical evidence proved that death was due to drowning, although the corpse had not been long immersed: but a sensation was caused when the evidence further disclosed that it bore an incised wound over the left breast, in itself sufficient to cause death had not suffocation quickly supervened.