"I got up dazed and dejected and went out. The early editions of the evening papers were already out, and on the contents bill I saw, 'American Millionaire's Motor Accident.' You must all of you have seen it. I bought it and read at once what I knew I should read. Mr. Ormond Wall, the Pittsburg millionaire and party, motoring from Spezzia to Pisa, had come into collision with a wagon and were overturned; Mr. Wall's condition was critical. "I went back to my room still dazed, and sat on the bed looking with unseeing eyes at the face on the wall. And even as I looked, suddenly it completely disappeared. "Later I found that Mr. Wall had succumbed to his injuries at what I take to be that very moment." Again he was silent. "Most remarkable," we said; "most extraordinary," and so forth, and we meant it too. "Yes," said the stranger. "There are three extraordinary, three most remarkable, things about my story. One is that it should be possible for the discoloration in a lodging-house in London not only to form the features of a gentleman in America, but to have this intimate association with his existence. It will take Science some time to explain that. Another is that that gentleman's name should bear any relation to the spot on which his features were being so curiously reproduced by some mysterious agency. Is it not so?" We agreed with him, and our original discussion on supernatural manifestations set in again with increased excitement, during which the narrator of the amazing experience rose and said good-night. Just as he was at the door, one of the company--I rejoice to think it was Spanton--recalled us to the cause of our excited debate by asking him, before he left, what he considered the third extraordinary thing in connection with his deeply interesting story. "You said three things, you know," Spanton reminded him. "Oh, the third thing," he said, as he opened the door, "I was forgetting that. The third extraordinary thing about the story is that I made it up about half an hour ago. Good-night, again." After coming to our senses we looked round for Rudson-Wayte, who had brought this snake to bite our bosoms, but he too had disappeared. CHAPTER XXVIII IN WHICH WE LOSE A FEW CENTURIES AND FIND A LIVING-PICTURE BY SIR DAVID WILKIE The Director in his search for primitive English music had tidings of two old Morris dancers in an Oxfordshire village, survivals from the past when the whole of that county fostered the art, and he took me to see them. Never have I spent a more curious evening. We left the train at Bicester late on a golden afternoon, and were driven to a little hamlet a few miles distant where the old fellows lived. They were brothers: one a widower of seventy, still lissom, and the other a bachelor of sixty-seven, bent and stiff; and with them when we arrived was another elderly man, a little their junior, blowing and beating away at his pipe and tabor as though dear life depended upon it.