On the popular belief that John Sadleir, Member for Sligo, a Junior Lord of the Treasury, Chairman of the London Joint Stock Banking Company, and the most successful swindler of modern times, obtained the body of a man resembling himself, conveyed it to Hampstead Heath, and placed his own silver cream jug with the remains of poison in it beside the corpse, Miss Braddon founded one of her famous novels. The fact that gave rise to the doubt as to Sadleir's being really dead was this: The body of the supposed Sadleir was found on Hampstead Heath some distance from the roadway or path. It had been a rainy evening, and the heath was sodden. But the soles of the boots the dead man was wearing were clean and unstained with moisture. Sadleir did not leave his house till nearly midnight, long after the heavy rain had commenced. How did he cross the heath and lie down to poison himself and die without wetting the soles of his boots? This strange circumstance was recalled when, long after the witnesses before the coroner's jury had identified the body as that of Sadleir, three men who had known him well declared that they had met him on the other side of the Atlantic. In these instances of the dead alive there is only vague surmise to grasp at. The element of a grim certainty enters into the cases of those who drop out of life to meet an unascertained fate. A friend of mine--an artist with whom in bygone years it was my privilege to be associated--had a daughter, a charming and beautiful girl of eighteen. She had no love affair or trouble of any kind. One winter evening about seven o'clock her mother wanted some Berlin wool. Close by the house was a shopping street where the wool could be obtained. The girl offered to fetch it for her mother, and went out with a shilling or two in her pocket. She bought the wool, but she never came back with it. From that hour to this--an interval of seven years--no living soul who knew that beautiful girl has ever set eyes on her again. Every effort to trace her has been in vain. She was seen at the end of the shopping street by a neighbour making her way towards her home. But between the end of that street and the house whose doors she was never to enter again she dropped out of human ken for ever. One day a man whom I knew--a prosperous suburban tradesman--went into a City office--the office of a firm with whom he had business transactions. He paid an account, and said he should come back late in the afternoon to give an order. He was going to his bank to cash a cheque.