He might not have looked at it even then, had he not chanced--chanced, mark you--in rising to reach for the marmalade, to tread on an iron tack. Now there was no reason, other than a providential one, why the tack should have been there; no reason why it should have stood up awkwardly on its head; none why its point should have penetrated the only thin place in the young gentleman’s pump. That all these things happened, with the result that, in the start and clutch he gave, he knocked over the _Daily Post_ and stooped to pick it up again, can be ascribed to supernatural design and to that alone. As he sat down, shin over thigh, to pluck the obtrusive nail from his sole, his eye was caught by an advertisement prominent in the Agony Column of the paper he held in his left hand:-- “_To Psychisis. Old gentleman suffering from obesity desires disintegration and reconstitution on normal lines. Superfluous flesh given away to the needy. No Shylocks need apply._” Gilead, having extracted the nail, read the advertisement again, and chuckled. It was of the order _Facetiæ_, of course. Wags not infrequently would thus parody the incredible absurdities of cults and cranks, or even invent wilder ones in a mere frolic of animal spirits. He had come across quite a number of such hoaxes in his long experience of the paper. There had been, for instance, the two ladies who, studying the endurance of physical pain, desired the co-operation of another in arranging for a series of private experiments on human subjects; there had been the duet of lone bachelors, depressed by London Sundays, who invited suggestions as to how best to pass their time in any agreeable way not involving energy, and those other two who, being without the capacity to work, invited some wealthy philanthropist to provide them with annuities and a cottage in the country meet to their leisured tastes. There had been the despairing gentleman who coveted a society and a friendship unfranked by whiskies and sodas, which disagreed with him, and the practising barrister who had offered an equitable mortgage of his body (heart excepted) in return for an accommodation. Finally there had been the demand for a man willing to demonstrate his personal pliability on an old English rack, Star Chamber pattern, and who had been recommended, by an admirable touch, to be ‘short to start with.’ Of such palpably was the obese gentleman, with his superfluous flesh, and Gilead was on the point of laying him aside, with a parting grin, when his gaze was caught and riveted on an advertisement which appeared just under the one in question:-- “_Middle-aged gentleman, recommended to chop wood for obesity two hours daily, seeks cheerful refined companion to work beside him away from home. Honorarium by arrangement. Address Winsom Wyllie:_ 048391 _Daily Post_.”