let sleeping dogs lie, in my opinion! Well, he went to one out-of-the-way place, and there he found a man he knew at first sight it was Dick Moore, though he had a big beard. Captain Jim got it shaved off and then there was no doubt—Dick Moore it was—his body at least. His mind wasn’t there—as for his soul, in my opinion he never had one!”
“What had happened to him?”
“Nobody knows the rights of it. All the folks who kept the boarding house could tell was that about a year before they had found him lying on their doorstep one morning in an awful condition—his head battered to a jelly almost. They supposed he’d got hurt in some drunken row, and likely that’s the truth of it. They took him in, never thinking he could live. But he did—and he was just like a child when he got well. He hadn’t memory or intellect or reason. They tried to find out who he was but they never could. He couldn’t even tell them his name—he could only say a few simple words. He had a letter on him beginning ‘Dear Dick’ and signed ‘Leslie,’ but there was no address on it and the envelope was gone. They let him stay on—he learned to do a few odd jobs about the place—and there Captain Jim found him. He brought him home—I’ve always said it was a bad day’s work, though I s’pose there was nothing else he could do. He thought maybe when Dick got home and saw his old surroundings and familiar faces his memory would wake up. But it
