must make shift with a bed at some decent coffee-house or inexpensive hotel. It was too early yet to think of turning in; it would be time enough an hour hence to set about finding quarters for the night. I wandered on, heedless whither my footsteps might lead me, my weariness all but forgotten in the novelty of the scenes which met my country-bred eyes at every turn. As the clocks were striking ten, I found myself on one of the bridges, gazing over the parapet at the black-flowing river as it washed and swirled through the arches under my feet. A thick fog was slowly creeping up, and even while I was gazing at the fringe of lamps on some other bridge, its dark mantle closed round them, and shut them in as completely as though they had never been. A few minutes later, the fog had reached the spot where I was standing, and had caught me in a damp, sickly embrace, which in a very little while sufficed to chill me to the marrow, and blotted out as completely as with a wet sponge all the seething world around me. When I began to move again after my halt, I realised for the first time how thoroughly weary and dead-beat I was, and that I must no longer delay seeking out a lodging for the night. The fog was thickening fast, and it was impossible to see more than three or four yards in any direction. In my bewilderment, instead of turning back towards the Strand side of the bridge, as my intention was, I seem to have unwittingly crossed to the Surrey side, seeing that, a few minutes later, I found myself in a maze of narrow, tortuous streets, in which gin palaces and fried-fish shops seemed to be the chief places of entertainment. I wandered on, turning from one thoroughfare into another, feeling in that thick, black fog more utterly lost and bewildered, even in the streets of London, than I should have done if set down at midnight in the heart of Salisbury Plain with nothing but the stars to guide me on my way. In the district in which I now found myself there seemed to be no small hotels where a stranger might find cheap but decent accommodation for the night—nothing but flaring taverns and low coffee-shops. Three or four of these latter I passed which, even dead-beat as I was, I could not summon up courage to enter—they looked too unsavoury and repulsive to a youth of countrified tastes like myself. At length I came to one which seemed more promising than any I had yet seen—cleaner and neater in every way, as far as I could judge by peering through the window. It was merely a coffee-shop, with some cups and saucers and a few muffins, teacakes, and other comestibles in the window; but what had more attraction for me than anything else was the welcome legend, ‘Good Beds,’ painted in black letters on the lamp over the door. I hesitated no longer, but pushed open the swing-doors and entered.