MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 39, 6 July 1914, Page 6

MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF.

DOGTOiI'S IDENTITY

GRIM IHiil-O-iUK, OF WAII A.,0 NIiIL'vVKKCK, Store is a strange yarn, with &, romantic touch ir it whiVh Rober., Lou..-. Stevenson vvoiud have relished wiicn hia facile invention \n;s bn,y over 'The New Arabian JMiglaa." 'lfco bcgmriin." of it wus printed in The Daily JSewu, a police-court charge at 'Soutlnumpion against "Dr. Hugh Munroe McLeod Mackenzie," who was alleged to have personated, for some years, the read Dr. H. M. M. Mackenzie, said to he practising in some remote district in South Africa. The defendant, a gliunt, shrouded figure, long-haired and shaken with an ague, was released on his own recognisances, and remanded for a fortnight, wtii'.'ii '.. he case was haf.f-vvaj through, after he had made this statement:— "I wate left, for dead in the Boer War, and it is only at times that I remember about my own identity: I am. a qualified medical man, hut I am not in a fit condition to plead to-day. I am practically a (lying man. ... I don't know really who I am, and if I am not Dr. Mackenzie, I should only be too glad if my identity could be proved." , A WEIRD FIGUIiE OF A MAS. This afternoon I sought out Dr. Mackenzie with iJi-i object, if possible (the case apart), of throwing some VigM on the puzzle, writes the News'correspondent. I walked for miles in the blazing sunshine along an a.most interminable road, and at i.iie end of it 1 found the little house of the Man-WhoT)oe;',n'i-Know-Who-lfe-fs. A brass plate glittered in the not tun—"Dr. Mackenzie"; a brass bell-push, '-hoiic. like ui.iOife.il gold ir the wall. A businesslike lady came to tihe door ami wkowed mo ijito the neat waiting-room. "Dr. Mackenzie is iSl —very iiJ," she said, "and can see a:>l)ouy. The shock ol yesterday . . . .'' But I persuaded him. somehow, to come down, und presently he appeared at the foot of the stairs, peeping through the curtains, the weirdest figure 1 of a man, outside a story -boclc, that it ha.s even been my lot to encounter. He seemed t<-. il>e shrunken to a skele ton. A Ion;; brown dres>iing gown clothed Oi,im f'omi neck to heel, revealing a flash of yellow pyjamas- as he descended tho stairs. UU face war, ni: rfieokiionc and scars, and lie was toi/thie;s, though not an old man by a lonrg way. Lively eyes blazed through a big pair of spectacles, and long' brown 'hair of extraordinary luxuriance, like Swinburne's, rolled in Waves about hia ear 1 -;. A MEMORY 'LIKE A. COUGH. - fie toad a terriVic cough, and as lie talked (wfliieh he did in spasm®, and with manifest pain) die was ever plucking at his dh>cst. In spite of this his grip, as he shook liands. was the grip of a young man, tnd vigorous. "Ocime into the surgery," he said, "and We sat side by side on. the sofa "Oan you remember —?" I ibegan, and he chattered along at tremendous 1 spued until that dreadful eougiki shook all speccih out of him and left 'him gasping. "1 remember," he said, "like I cough—in fits and starts. It waa that ibunsting shell in the. Boer war that did aM the damage." He pointed to his scarred jaw and displayed the gap of his toothless gums. "Necrosis," .-aid he, w'.tf.:, a. signrilcant gesture that made ino "Picture me Bitting down in all that —that— tumwlt, and extracting all my own teeth! A nieo game, eh? Oh, I am Dr. Mackenzie right enough. I -was in the field hosoila.!. I way with BuHer during that Black Wee!:, when he lost the guna at Colenso. If you only lenew—."

A HIATUS ."ND A SHTPWftHOK. "I was iSi-eM, too," I saJd remembering across Uie years that dlsnuti'. Christmas of 1899. And it was quite clear to ma that he viw there. The fact tliat the two of u-5, crouching on the li'title sofa in the littto Southampton surgery, were .probably within n, rifle shot of one smother in NataJ during W'tit harassing time set the doctors memory going again, and he spoke of incidents and places and names, and of grim, things that bad happened there, as only one who had seen ihem could talk .

Then—that worrying hiatus, that fvudden lapse when the remembrance, of things all g|oes fclasikty I slipped in h. quick t]Ui;(*tion about the loss «\f hia diplomas. "Ah! The.ro was a shipwreck," hi <T3id. "The wreck of the Narcissus. Do you remember that. It was off BilImp. I lost everything. And then, there was a 'ire, too; and that settled it. So I was helpless. But really 11 can't 'talk any more; it's tearing mo to I pieces." v

NATIONALITY. "Are you, like me, an Iryitaau?* I asked suddenly and inoonsexruently. "Good Lord, man! I'm a Soot," oriel the little man, firing up. "Did you ever know a Mackenzie who wals an Irishman? I'm a Mackenzie—and the Mackenzie'*? ucver say die. And if you're an Irishman and come f-ram the North, then » eVe the same breed, so to 'tipeaik. Whiroo!"

And not another word would this strange little- man witfh the wild haft and the l>risw eyes sxy. He wrapped his ilong .brown dressing-gtown round his frail figure, shook my hand in his bony squeeze, and flapped hack in bed.