The blotting-paper was the last thing left to dispose of: two neatly-folded sheets, quite clean, except in one place, where the impression of a few lines of writing appeared.

I was about to put the blotting-paper into my pocket after the pens, when something in the look of the writing impressed on it, stopped me.
Four blurred lines appeared of not more than two or three words each, running out one beyond another regularly from left to right.

Had the doctor been composing poetry and blotting it in a violent hurry?
At a first glance, that was more than I could tell.

The order of the written letters, whatever they might be, was reversed on the face of the impression taken of them by the blotting-paper.

I turned to the other side of the leaf.