The threats of the old lady did not much disturb me; but they were not altogether so unmeaning as I supposed, for in two days thereafter a summons was handed into me, demanding my presence at the police court of the district, to answer for my refusal to deliver up to the rightful owner property belonging to her, which I owned to having found, but refused to account for. That I was very much annoyed may be easily supposed; but at the same time I could not help being somewhat amused, bearing in recollection how I had tried to satisfy the unreasonable dame, who had evidently more money than wit, seeing she was ready to waste it on so hopeless a case. I duly made my appearance before the worthy magistrate, whom I happened to know slightly, and who could not restrain an amused grin when I was called forward. My assistant accompanied me as a matter of course. The old lady had engaged a smart lawyer, who did his best in trying to make out a case; but his client rather weakened his statement by her inconsequential answers to both her counsel and the magistrate. My answer was easy. I shewed how the prosecutrix had utterly failed in describing the keys. I told that the rightful owner had rightly described them; and I put my assistant into the box to prove his having seen every key in the bunch fitted into its proper lock. 'Were you passing along Oxford Street on the morning that this bunch of keys was found?' asked the magistrate of the old lady. 'I was that way in an omnibus in the afternoon,' was the answer. 'But the keys in question were found in the morning, and were lying on the pavement,' remarked His Worship. 'Ah, I don't know how that might be,' said my persecutor; 'but I know I lost a bunch of keys.' 'Well, the case is dismissed; and you must pay expenses.' And so ended the case. Now I have no doubt the old lady, though so wrong-headed in the claim she set up against me, had really lost a bunch of keys on the day my assistant made his--for me--unlucky find. Nor do I for a moment doubt the fact of some of the other applicants having also lost keys on the same day and perhaps near the same spot. But the applications by letter and personally numbered altogether not far short of fifty; and it may be set down as a moral certainty that they did not all lose, each of them, a bunch of keys on that particular day, and in Oxford Street--without being particular as to the spot. My theory is, that some of them had probably got their pockets picked of their keys while travelling by omnibus, and could not of course tell exactly where they lost them. Others may have simply mislaid their keys, and jumped to the conclusion that they were lost. Some others, I fear, had not lost keys at all, but merely came to my place out of idle curiosity. All of them, I know, gave me more trouble than I ever hope to have again in an affair of the kind.