"I haven't the pleasure of knowing you, sir," I said indifferently. "You don't know Dr. Beale? Come, come, this won't do at all," he said, smiling. I assured him that I had never set eyes upon him before, and went on to explain how I had been travelling to Paris and suddenly struck insensible, only to regain consciousness and find myself in Africa-- rich, married, and ten years older. The doctor listened with grave attention, and subsequently we entered upon a long and rather heated discussion. All I wanted to discover was how I came to be there. "Monomania, evidently," observed the doctor in a low voice, when we had been talking for some time. "It develops frequently into the most violent form of madness. He will have to be kept in seclusion and watched." Again I resented the imputation that I was going insane, to which the medical luminary replied, "Very well, my dear fellow, very well. We will believe what you say. Calm yourself; for your wife is nervous and weak, remember." I turned away disgusted. All my efforts to explain the remarkable facts had only been met with incredulity by the idiotic, soft-spoken old doctor, who undoubtedly imagined I was mad. In desperation I strode out of the house, and spent the night in wandering about the grounds, and walking aimlessly through unfamiliar roads, subsequently sitting down upon the fallen trunk of a tree, where I fell asleep. When I retraced my footsteps, the bright morning sun was glinting through the foliage of the dense wood that seemed to almost surround the house. From a servant I learnt that my _soi-disant_ wife was too unwell to leave her room; and as I wandered through the place, I entered one apartment which was evidently a study--my own, possibly. Glancing round at the books, the two great iron safes, and the telephone instruments, I seated myself at the littered writing-table. Turning over the papers before me, I saw they related to mining enterprises involving large sums. Many of them were evidently in my handwriting, but the signatures were "Henry Medhurst," and the note-paper bore the heading, "Great Bellefontaine Gold Mines, Offices, 127 Commissioner Street, Johannesburg." Upwards of an hour I sat plunged in thought, bewildered by the events of the past few hours. I felt I must make some strenuous effort to solve the enigma, and account for the intervening ten years that I had lost. I could not have been asleep in the manner of the legendary Rip Van Winkle, but must have been existing during the period. Yet where did I live? And how?