"Extraordinary," murmured the second. "I see that the scientific publication you have just relinquished suggests that the cause of these hurried exits partake of the nature of post-epileptic phenomena." And then the talk went on. The four strangers dined together, supped together, and on the following morning partook in company of breakfast. The waiter, at about eleven o'clock, presented each of them with a note. It came from the landlord, and was full of figures. A weird look appeared on their faces. "We must move on," said one of the quartette; "but as the staircase is steep, let us descend by the window." The no-longer-perplexed strangers adopted the suggestion, and gently sliding down a rope, were soon quit of the inn. They walked together for about a quarter of a mile, and then coming to four cross-roads, scattered. "Dear me," said the landlord of the inn, when he once again found himself alone. "Their disappearance is most strange. I am inclined to agree with the _Lancet_, 'that the phenomenon remains striking and mysterious, interesting in its psychological aspect, but in its concrete form full of practical and medico-legal difficulties;' and, believing this, I must write to the proper authorities." And he sat down and composed two letters. One he addressed to the President of the Royal College of Physicians, and the other to the Editor of _Hue and Cry_. * * * * * BLIND ALLEY-GORIES. BY DUNNO WÄHRIAR. (_Translated from the original Lappish by Mr. Punch's own Hyperborean Enthusiast._) NO. II.--THE ILLUSTRIOUS STRANGER. The sky was darkened by swart birds, with tufted tails, and a look in their clay-coloured eyes as of millions of stifled croaks; the rain fell in grizzled sheets like the streaming hair and beard of some Titanic lunatic, and the thunder boomed over the town as if it had just discovered another epoch-making novel. Night fell; I lit my lamp and closed the shutters, drew my curtains, so as to shut out any gleaming cats' eyes that might be peering at me through the chinks, and mixed myself a tumbler of hot punch. As I finished it, a wild piercing shriek rose from the universe, as though someone had run a pin into the Great Unknown, and a shining blue-white ball came down the chimney and burnt a hole in the yellow-green gloom of my hearthrug. I looked up; a strange man was sitting right in front of me. His crested hair had a blue-white gleam, like the electric light in a mountain hotel when the storm is nearly ended; it stuck out in a spiral fringe round his cheeks and chin; his mouth was prim like a purse; but his spectacles twinkled with laughter like the new ferrule on a gingham umbrella.