"I have a son," madame resumed, "who has of late betrayed symptoms of the strangest mania, although he appears to be in perfect health in all other respects. He imagines that some gigantic robbery has been committed; sometimes he declares that bonds to a large amount have been stolen, at other times it is money, then again that costly jewels have disappeared; but the strangest phase of his malady consists in the fact that he accuses me, and sometimes other members of the family, of being the thief, and insists that he must have me arrested. This has gone on for some time, and I have been obliged to adopt every kind of device in order to keep him from carrying out his threats and thus creating a very uncomfortable scandal. This morning he became more violent than usual, and I felt obliged to take some decided step in regard to proper treatment for him; therefore my visit to you." "It is a singular mania, truly," said the physician, who had been listening with the deepest interest to his companion's recital. "I think I never have met with anything exactly like it before in all my experience. How old is your son, Mrs. Walter?" "Twenty-four years," the woman replied, with a heavy sigh; "and," she added, tremulously, "I cannot bear the thought of sending him to any common lunatic asylum. I learned recently that you sometimes receive private patients to test their cases before sending them to a public institution, and that you have frequently effected a cure in critical cases. Will you take my son and see what you think of his case--what you can do for him? I shall not mind the cost--I wish to spare nothing, and I do not wish any one, at least of our friends and acquaintances, to know that he is under treatment for insanity until you pronounce your verdict. He seems sane enough upon all other topics, except now and then he persists in calling himself by some other name, and I know he would be very sensitive, should he recover, to have his condition known. He does not even suspect that I am contemplating any such thing, and I shall be obliged to use strategy in bringing him to you." Doctor Wesselhoff was evidently very deeply interested in the case; he had never heard of anything like it before, and all his professional enthusiasm was aroused. He spent some time questioning his visitor, and finally decided that he would receive the young man immediately--to-morrow afternoon Mrs. Walton might bring him, he said, if she could conveniently arrange to do so. "I think, perhaps, it will not be best for me to come with him myself," the lady said, after considering the matter for some time. "Truly," she added, with a sad smile, "I almost fear to go out with him, lest he put his threats into execution and have me arrested. But I think I can arrange with my sister, Mrs. Vanderbeck, to persuade him to come with her as if to call upon a friend."