Handouts. I write these myself in the style of the papers of the day, type them up, cut them out with pinking shears, and soak them in cold tea overnight so they come out the color of old newsprint. Then I hand them across the table at the moment of my choosing and watch faces. Here they are in the order the investigators found them. The Mercury and the Clarion are mine. Miss Buchholz's paper is, too, though she'd like you to think it's hers.

WEXCOMBE, Aug. 20. The body of Ralph Thiel, 44, a fisherman of this village, was brought ashore Tuesday morning by the crew of the schooner Abigail R., having been found in the shallows off Chapel Rock. Mr. Thiel had not been seen since Saturday evening, when he went out alone to see to his lobster pots. His dory was found drawn up on the Rock itself, well above the tide line, with the oars shipped and the painter made fast.

Mr. Thiel is the third man of Wexcombe to be lost in those waters since the first of June. The county coroner returned a finding of accidental drowning. Asked how a seasoned fisherman came to drown within a stone's throw of his own boat, Dr. Robert Cameron said that the sea keeps its own counsel.

Mr. Thiel leaves a wife and four children. Services will be held at the Congregational church on Saturday.

ARKHAM, Aug. 29. A week has now passed without word of Professor Alton Swarts of the Department of Geology at Miskatonic University, who left this city on August 22 to make a study of the salt marshes near Wexcombe, in the northern part of the county.

The professor, a bachelor of 61 years and a well-known figure on the Arkham campus, was last seen by the Wexcombe postmistress, who sold him a two-cent stamp on the afternoon of his arrival and describes him as "in excellent spirits and very particular about the tides." His room at a Wexcombe boarding house was found undisturbed, his bag unpacked.

A search of the marshes by local men was abandoned after two days. A colleague who declined to be named told the Courier that Professor Swarts had lately become "much taken with old local records" and had spoken of a "discovery of some importance" which he would not describe.

The trustees of the old Rock Chapel at Wexcombe, the said chapel having been closed by vote of the proprietors after the events of the summer last, offer for sale at public auction, on the green before the Congregational meeting house, Saturday next at ten o'clock: twelve pews of white pine; one pulpit, carved; sundry hymnals; and one bell of bronze, cast in England, weighing some four hundred pounds, to be sold for the value of the metal and removed from the town by the purchaser. No bid will be taken from any resident of Wexcombe.

Mr. Anthony Barrington, of the Barrington Line, has returned to his summer residence at Ravensholm, on the point above Wexcombe, rather later in the season than is his custom, and is said to intend remaining well into the autumn. Mr. Barrington, who has been much abroad this year on business of the Line, will entertain a small party of friends on Wednesday next. His late father's yacht, the Seraph, has been brought round from Marblehead and lies at the Ravensholm mooring.

To the Editor:

I have lived on the Neck Road at Wexcombe for sixty-three years, and I wish to say in your paper what nobody in this village will say out loud, which is that there is a bell ringing on Chapel Rock again, at the bottom of the tide, the same as there was in the summer of 1870 when I was a girl. My mother heard it then and she would not let us out of the house after dark until it stopped. It stopped when they took the bell away. I would like someone to explain to me what is ringing now.

I am told by my nephew that I ought not to write this letter. I am an old woman, and I have decided to write it anyway.

A LIFELONG RESIDENT.

WEXCOMBE, Sept. 21. Jerome Amaral, a private investigator with offices in this city, was arrested here Saturday by a deputy of the county sheriff on a charge of breaking and entering the boathouse of Mr. Anthony Barrington, the shipping man, on the night of the 19th. He was released the same afternoon on bail furnished by a friend.

The only witness against Mr. Amaral is a gardener in Mr. Barrington's employ, who says he saw a man of Mr. Amaral's description "on the lawn near the water." Mr. Amaral, who is assisting in the search for the missing Professor Alton Swarts of Miskatonic University, denies the charge.

It may interest the readers of the Courier to know that nothing has been reported missing from the boathouse, and that in the matter of the three men drowned at Wexcombe this summer, and of a respected scholar who has not been seen in a month, no arrest of any kind has been made.