176 ANGLING SKETCHES 



were not themselves aware of having been. That 

 is why human testimony seems to me to establish 

 no more, in certain circumstances, than a highly 

 probable working hypothesis a hypothesis on 

 which, of course, we are bound to act. 



There is little more to tell. By dint of careful 

 nursing, poor Allen was enabled to travel ; he 

 reached Mentone, and there the mistral ended 

 him. He was a lonely man, with no kinsfolk ; his 

 character was cleared among the people who knew 

 him best ; the others have forgotten him. Nobody 

 can be injured by this explanation of his silence 

 when called on to prove his innocence, and of his 

 unusually successful vanishing from a society 

 which had never tried very hard to discover him in 

 his retreat. He has lived and suffered and died, 

 and left behind him little but an incident in the 

 History of the Unexplained. 



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