Thursday midnight
`` Extraordinary , sir ? '' said the old colonel , looking over his spectacles , `` why should it be extraordinary that one person should disappear when whole nations -- the ten tribes for example ... '' `` But that 's a different thing altogether , '' said the old clergyman . `` Now if you had quoted Biblical examples -- Elisha or perhaps Jonah ... '' After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way I rose from the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the room . It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed -- how newspaper correspondents were sent from London to Ellan to inquire into the circumstances of my disappearance ; how the theory of accident gave place to the theory of suicide , and the theory of suicide to the theory of flight ; how a porter on the pier at Blackwater said he had carried my trunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight , thinking I was a maid from the great house until I had given him half-a-crown -LRB- his proper fee being threepence -RRB- ; how two female passengers had declared that a person answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool ; how these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing ; and how , finally , the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my disappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped from mid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea . But then came another development . My father , who was reported to have received the news of my departure in a way that suggested he had lost control of his senses -LRB- raging and storming at my husband like a man demented -RRB- , having come to the conclusion that I , being in a physical condition peculiar to women , had received a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory , offered five hundred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery , which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart-broken family but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title and inheritance . With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal appearance .