Crown-and-Anchor-court was still astir when Lucius entered its modest shades. It was the hour of supper beer, and small girls in pinafores, who, from a sanitary point of view, ought to have been in bed hours before, were trotting to and fro with large crockeryware jugs, various in colour and design, but bearing a family likeness in dilapidation, not one being intact as to spout and handle. There were farther indications of the evening meal in an appetising odour of fried onions, a floating aroma of bloaters, faint breathings of stewed tripe, and even whispers of pork-chops. The day may have gone ill with the Crown-and-Anchorites, and dinners may have run short, but the heads of the household made it up at night with some toothsome dish when the children—except always the useful errand-going eldest daughter—were snug in bed, and there were fewer mouths to be filled with the choice morsel. A light twinkled in Mr. Wincher’s parlour, but he and his good lady had sought no consolation from creature-comforts. A fragment of hardest Dutch cheese and the heel of a stale half-quartern alone adorned their melancholy board. Mrs. Wincher sat with her elbows on the table, in a contemplative mood; Mr. Wincher came to the door chumping his dry fare industriously. ‘My good people,’ said Lucius, coming straight to the point, ‘I have come to beg your forgiveness for a great wrong. I have only this night discovered the actual truth.’ ‘You have found the property, sir?’ cried Mr. Wincher, trembling a little from very joy, and making a sudden bolt of his unsavoury mouthful. Mrs. Wincher gave a shrill scream, followed by a shriller laugh, indicative of that most troublesome of feminine ailments, hysteria. Lucius knew the symptoms but too well. His lady-patients in the Shadrack-road were, as a rule, hysterical. They ‘went off,’ as they called it, on the smallest provocation. Their joys and sorrows expressed themselves in hysteria; their quarrels ended in hysteria; they were hysterical at weddings, christenings, and funerals; and they prided themselves on the weakness. After having tried all remedies suggested by the highest authorities upon this particular form of disease, Lucius had found that the most efficacious treatment was one ignored by the faculty. This simple mode of cure was to take no notice of the patient. He took no notice of Mrs. Wincher’s premonitory symptoms; and instead of ‘going off,’ that lady ‘came to.’ ‘No, Mr. Wincher,’ he said, in answer to the old man’s eager question, ‘the property has not been recovered—never will be, I should think; but I am tolerably satisfied as to the thief, and I know you are not the man.’ ‘Thank God, sir—thank God!’ cried Mr. Wincher devoutly. ‘I am very thankful. I couldn’t have died easy while you and my old master thought me a thief and a liar.’ The tears rolled down Mr. Wincher’s wrinkled cheek. He dropped feebly into his chair, and wiped those joyful tears with a corner of the threadbare tablecloth.