“Not he!” exclaimed the landlord, contemptuously. “He was one of them scientific chaps, like you reads about in the papers. What good they does I don’t know! Always seems to me as though they’d be better employed doing something useful instead of talking a lot of gibberish decent folks don’t understand. Well, this poor chap suffered for his folly, anyhow.”

“Why, what happened to him?” enquired the Professor without any great show of interest.

“Burnt to death!” replied the landlord, impressively. “Burnt till there wasn’t nothing but a heap of charred bones left, sir. Terrible thing it was, and him all alone out on the heath there. Quiet enough chap he seemed too. Why, I couldn’t believe my ears when the constable told me about him afterwards. You wouldn’t have guessed what the chap was really, not if you was to try for a twelvemonth.”

“I daresay not,” remarked the Professor dryly. “I never was good at guessing. What was he?”