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40 CHAPTER III. They sent up a report to the Commissioners. It was rather a compound document. It was drawn up by the governor, the doctor, and Mr. Dodsworth in concert, with here and there a word or two from Mr. Murray, while in a sort of postscript Warder Slater was brought in. It narrated at some length, and with a considerable amount of circumlocution—in accordance with official traditions—the story of the photographs. The negatives went with the report. They were submitted to the impartial judgment of the Commissioners, to take or leave just as they pleased.

Mr. Paley was particularly anxious that in the report there should not only be no suggestion of the supernatural, but that there should be a distinct disclaimer of any suggestion of the kind. On this point there was a slight difference of opinion. The doctor insisted that the things which had occurred could not have occurred without the interposition of something out of the natural. He wished to insert, in his portion of the report, a gentle hint to the effect that they might have hit—which hit would tend to the advancement of photographic science—upon a novel force. Mr. Dodsworth had, or declared that he had, no theories either one way or the other. He would have liked the report to have contained nothing but a bald statement of facts. While Mr. Murray—however, no one paid the slightest attention