‘Ah, that daylight is a great tell-tale,’ answered the stranger with the ghost of a shrug. ‘Bon soir, monsieur; I hope you will sleep well, and have pleasant dreams.’ Again the same inscrutable smile flitted across his face. Raising his hat slightly, he pushed open the swing-doors, and passed out into the fog and darkness. It was growing late by this time. Besides myself, there were only two customers now left in the place, who seemed still as intent on their game of dominoes as they had been when I went in. Summoning Jean, I asked to be shown to my room. I think the bedroom into which I was presently inducted was the very smallest in which it was ever my lot to sleep, while the bed itself was so short, that a tall lanky fellow such as I was might well wonder how his length of limb was to be packed away in so small a compass. On turning down the bedclothes, the sheets and pillow-cases, to my countrified eyes, accustomed to the snowiest of linen, looked far too dingy to be at all inviting. It seemed to me that they had not been changed for a considerable period; but be that as it may, I had no inclination to trust myself into too close contact with their dubious purity. I was tired enough to sleep anywhere, and had there been anything in the shape of an easy-chair in the room, I would have made that my couch for the night. What I did was to take off my collar, boots, and coat, lie down on the bed, turn up the counterpane over me on both sides, and lay my coat over that. Thousands in London that night had a far worse bed than mine. Leaving the end of candle which Jean had given me to burn itself out, three minutes later I was in a sound dreamless sleep. FORTUNE. By a deplorable limitation of the meaning of the word, it has come about that the idea suggested to most minds by the expression ‘fortune’ or ‘a fortunate man’ is the accumulation of wealth. It would seem, therefore, that, in the popular estimation, no man is fortunate who is not in the possession of riches. A little thought, above all a little experience of life, will soon convince us that this is not the case; and so far is it from being true, that wealth will be found to be but a small and solitary factor in those various accidents or providences of our lives from which we derive our happiness. The sordid wooer in the ballad, who asked, ‘What is your fortune, my pretty maid?’ knew of no fortune beside that of riches. The pretty and witty maid knew better. ‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said; and let in a flood of unaccustomed light upon the benighted mind of her baffled suitor, to whom it had never occurred that fortune might consist in beauty and the qualities that win love and admiration.