A fortnight had passed away since they first came into my possession. I had only another parcel to go through, and I should be finished. I was quietly sitting in my chair with my legs stretched out on another chair, as is my custom--I find it remarkably restful--and lighting up my brier I cut the string of the last bundle. Slowly, one by one, I lifted up those pieces of brown paper. They were still objects of reverence to me. Here was the head of a child, a sweetly pretty child, and next to it a study of a dissipated character, the face of a man fast losing every working power of his brain and body by liquor. I realized the genius of my dead friend more and more. [Illustration: "SLOWLY I LIFTED UP THOSE PIECES OF BROWN PAPER."] I had gone through quite a score of these play studies, when my hand stretched out for another from the pile by my side. I turned the piece of paper round and round, and it was some time before I grasped what the subject was intended for. It appeared to be a piece of round tubing from which smoke was protruding. The next half-dozen studies were of a similar character. In one the smoke was very small, just a thin streak; in another it was a full volume, as though to represent the after effect of the discharge of a bullet from a revolver. I looked again. The chalk drawing of the tubing was evidently intended for the barrel of a pistol! Huntingdon always put the date on every study he made, and I found my hand trembling as I turned the paper over. Great heavens--10th October, 1872--the day before his death! Another paper bore the same date, and the others had the date of the previous day--the 9th. Was his death, then, the result of an accident and not a suicide after all? Here was the simple explanation of it so far--here was the reason for the several shots which the old housekeeper had heard fired. He had discharged the revolver at these times in order to watch the effect and immediately place his impressions on the pieces of paper I now held in my hand. My knowledge of Godfrey Huntingdon--both medically and fraternally--told me that, at the time of his death, there was positively nothing on his mind to cause such an act, and I now began reasoning the whole within myself once again, as I had done many times since the occurrence.