“Then isn’t that the best way to cure the fool⁠—the brute⁠—?” thundered the clergyman, half rising to his feet.

“Certainly it would be an easy and undiscoverable form of murder,” was the stern reply, spoken as calmly as though it were a remark about the weather.

Maloney collapsed visibly, and I gathered the wood over the fire and coaxed up a blaze.

“The greater part of the man’s life⁠—of his vital forces⁠—goes out with this Double,” Dr. Silence resumed, after a moment’s consideration, “and a considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. So the physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force, but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, just like the body of a materialising medium at a séance. Moreover, any mark or injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced by the phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body lying in its trance⁠—”