'I took the opinion of an eminent sheriff substitute.' 'What is that?' 'Oh, a fearfully swagger legal official: _you_ have nothing like it.' 'Rum country, Scotland,' said Merton. 'Rum country, England,' said Logan, indignantly. '_You_ have no property in corpses.' Merton was silenced. Neither could foresee how momentous, to each of them, the question of property in corpses was to prove. _O pectora caeca_! * * * * * Miss Blowser is now Mrs. Potter. She married her aged wooer, and Rangoon still wins prizes at the Crystal Palace. V. THE ADVENTURE OF THE OFFICE SCREEN It is not to be supposed that all the enterprises of the Company of Disentanglers were fortunate. Nobody can command success, though, on the other hand, a number of persons, civil and military, are able to keep her at a distance with surprising uniformity. There was one class of business which Merton soon learned to renounce in despair, just as some sorts of maladies defy our medical science. 'It is curious, and not very creditable to our chemists,' Merton said, 'that love philtres were once as common as seidlitz powders, while now we have lost that secret. The wrong persons might drink love philtres, as in the case of Tristram and Iseult. Or an unskilled rural practitioner might send out the wrong drug, as in the instance of Lucretius, who went mad in consequence.' 'Perhaps,' remarked Logan, 'the chemist was voting at the Comitia, and it was his boy who made a mistake about the mixture.' 'Very probably, but as a rule, the love philtres _worked_. Now, with all our boasted progress, the secret is totally lost. Nothing but a love philtre would be of any use in some cases. There is Lord Methusalem, eighty if he is a day.' 'Methusalem has been unco "wastefu' in wives"!' said Logan. 'His family have been consulting me--the women in tears. He _will_ marry his grandchildren's German governess, and there is nothing to be done. In such cases nothing is ever to be done. You can easily distract an aged man's volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer. But she is just as ineligible as the first; marry he _will_, always a young woman. Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him a love philtre, and gain his heart, appearances would, more or less, be saved. But, short of philtres, there is nothing to be done. We turn away a great deal of business of that sort.' The Society of Disentanglers, then, reluctantly abandoned dealings in this class of affairs.