`Telling her of the proposal that you have made to me?'

`Telling her of everything that has passed between us today.'

It is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had offered to me.

`I shall have time to write by to-day's post,' he said, looking at his watch. `Don't forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the hotel! I will call to-morrow morning and hear how you have passed the night.'

I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful sense of his kindness which I really felt.

He pressed my hand gently. `Remember what I told you on the moor,' he answered. `If I can do you this little service, Mr.Blake, I shall feel it like a last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and clouded day.'

We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next ten days -- every one of them more or less directly connected with the experiment of which I was the passive object -- are all placed on record, exactly as they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy's assistant. In the pages of Ezra Jennings nothing is concealed, and nothing is forgotten. Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the opium was tried, and how it ended.