escorted her; and her answer was unequivocal
that her only companion had been the lady she
named.

When in my official life I have found a conflict
of testimony between persons of known integrity,
I have always sought some way of reconciling
them. But in this case I confess I was baffled;
and had I not had more confidence in my friend
than the critics have in the Bible, I should have
given her up as being utterly untruthful, and
perhaps worse. But I afterwards obtained from
her the solution of the enigma. The lady she
named was the wife of their doctor. His house
was near the gate of the park; and when his wife
alighted he took her place in the carriage and
drove with my friend to the hall door.

Not all the Biblical critics of Christendom
can find in Scripture a more hopeless conflict
of testimony than would have been my friend's
account, and my own, of her return to her father's
house that night. If we had both written about
it without first comparing notes, I should have
asserted that her only companion was a gentle-
man; she would have declared that her only
companion was a lady. "Sherlock Holmes"
himself could have made nothing of it. And yet
the solution of it seems ludicrously simple when

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