I got home without further adventure in time not to be missed by my little invalid; but for several days the queer street-name abode with me, as the merest trifles _will_ haunt an overanxious mind, such as mine then was. I repeated it to myself hundreds of times; I made it into a sort of idiotic refrain or chorus, with which I kept time to my own footsteps on my daily tramps. I tried to make rhymes to it, with indifferent success; and altogether it was some weeks before the tiresome phantom finally departed. Also, I often wondered whether the drenched young man with the crushed hat had managed to get a light after all. * * * * * Twelve years had gone, and with them my troubles—such troubles at least as had been with me at the time of the beginning of this story. I was now a prosperous solicitor, with a large and varied practice, and with a comfortable home on the northern heights of London, wherein to cherish the dear wife, no longer sick, who had been my loving companion through the years of scarcity. The firm’s practice was a varied one; but personally I devoted myself to that branch of it in which I had begun my professional life—the criminal law. In this I had fairly won myself a name both as an advocate and a lawyer—often very different things—which tended to make me a richer man every day. And I am glad to be able to say that I had added to this reputation another yet more valuable—that of being an honourable and honest man. Late one afternoon, as I sat in my office after a long day at the Central Criminal Court, making preparations for my homeward flight, a stranger was shown in to me. He sat down and began his story, to which I at first listened with professional attention and indifference. But I soon became a trifle more interested; for this, as it seemed, was a tale of long-deferred vengeance, falling after the lapse of years upon the right head; such as we lawyers meet with more often in sensational novels—of which we are particularly fond—than in the course of practice.