“How can there be one? I have known somewhat similar cases, though never so perfect, where some injury to the head has changed the disposition and to some extent the memory, but, as I say, never to this extent. As a matter of fact one can find traces of the curate in that narrative. A quotation from Shelley, a familiarity with strange types, a distaste for sex and so on, and, of course, the closing sentences; otherwise he is, as he appears in his story, the precise opposite of what he actually was. Perhaps you may have missed almost the most remarkable thing. His description of the accident, as seen in his vision, is precisely identical with that of the two eye-witnesses of it, yet, of course, he never could have seen it, and he hasn’t read a word since he recovered consciousness. I said just now there wasn’t a word of truth in that narrative, but that in a sense is presumptuous and unscientific. The fashionable theory to-day is that we each one of us create our own particular god and our own particular universe--it is subjectivity’s innings. We certainly create our own truths. Fortunately in the case of most of us our truth roughly corresponds with the truth of others. The Reverend Wellington Scot’s violently diverges, so we have to lock him up. He has been here a year, and I found he went to a Greyhound Racing Meeting at the White City the night before the accident. Would you like to see him again?” “Yes and no. On the whole, yes.” Lanton took me along a corridor and unlocked a door. The Reverend Wellington Scot was seated at a table, his face partly shaded by a reading lamp. He was writing busily, but looked up after a moment and shot that penetrating glance at me. “I hope you have everything you want, Mr. Scot,” said Lanton. “Yes, thank you, sir,” he replied, in the mild, slightly clipped, slightly sing-song voice of a stage-curate, “but I have one little question to ask of you, should the words watch-garter be hyphenated, in your opinion, or not?” “Hyphenated, I think,” replied Lanton. “I am much obliged to you, and glad to find that we are in agreement. I suppose, sir, I shall be here for some little time yet?” “Oh yes, just for a little while longer,” said Lanton. “Good-night.” “Good-night, sir,” he replied, his pencil already busy again. “Poor devil,” I said, as we walked back to Lanton’s study. “Is he happy?” “Perfectly,” replied Lanton. “There ought to be a deep truth hidden somewhere in that fact; and now for a drink.” THE RED LODGE THE RED LODGE