“A great crime has been committed,” he said. “A professional thief has used the name and signature of Mr. Tupper in order to rob you of five pounds, and he has succeeded only too well. Let this be a lesson to you, Mr. Corkey, not again to fall into conversation with the first well-dressed—or badly dressed—stranger who may accost you. To think that the insolent scoundrel dared to use that sacred name!” Mr. Westonshaugh evidently considered it a very much worse thing to forge Martin Tupper’s name than to steal my five-pound note. And I dare say it was. He forgave me, however, and withdrew his dreadful hint about my having had too much to drink. Then I left him and worked in a very miserable frame of mind until six o’clock—to make up for my wasted time. It was my earliest great and complete crusher; and, coming just at this critical moment, made it simply beastly sad. Because my very first earnings were completely swallowed up in this nefarious manner by a shady customer. I had hoped to return home and flourish my five-pound note in the face of Aunt Augusta and tell her to help herself liberally out of it; but, instead of that, I had to horrify her with the bad news that my money was gone for ever. If it had happened later, I believe that I should have made less and even felt less of it; but such fearful luck falling on my very first “fiver” made it undoubtedly harder to bear than it otherwise would have been. And then I got a sort of gloomy idea that losing my first honest earnings meant a sort of curse on everything I might make in after life! I felt that a bad start like that might dog me for years, if not for ever. I had a curious and horrid dread that I should never really make up this great loss, but always be five pounds short through the rest of my career to my dying day! Aunt Augusta tried hard to make light of it. In fact, it is undoubtedly at times like this that a woman is far more comforting than a man. She went to her private store and brought out another crisp and clean five-pound note and made me take it. She insisted, and so reluctantly I took it; but I didn’t spend it in the least with the joy and ease that I should have spent the other. It was, in fact, merely a gift—good enough in its way—but very different from the one I had earned, single-handed, by hard work, in a humming hive of industry. The whole thing had its funny side—to other people, and I heard a good deal about it at the Apollo Fire Office. In fact, I must have done the real Martin Tupper a good turn in a way, because it was the fashion for everybody to quote from his improving works when I passed by. It was a great lesson all round; but London is full of interesting things of this sort. V