I was dining that evening at the Oxford and Cambridge Club with Mr. Andrew Lang. When I arrived there I was ushered into the club drawing-room, with the intimation that Mr. Lang would join me in a moment, and that I would find another of his guests already in the room. I stepped to the fireplace, where this gentleman was standing, and my feelings may be imagined when I discovered that it was the very man who had pointed us out at the window of the Reform Club a few hours earlier. He was Mr. Charles Elton, then one of the members for Somersetshire. I saw that he did not recognise me, but the desire to confess my offending was irresistible. "You were at the meeting at the Carlton Club this afternoon, were you not?" I said to him. He looked at me rather curiously, before replying in the affirmative, and then added, "But you were not there?" "No," I said, "but did you observe anything curious at the Reform Club?" At once his face lighted up with angry intelligence. "Yes!" he said, "I did. There were a couple of scallywags"--it was the first time I had ever heard this modern term of reproach, and it is not surprising that I have nearly forgotten it--"watching us through opera-glasses from one of the windows, and signalling to a man whom they had put on the top of our club, and who was listening through the ventilator to the speeches." No words can express the sense of relief I felt when I heard this absurd statement. "No," I replied, "I assure you that you are mistaken. I am sorry to say that I was one of the scallywags who were looking out of the Reform Club, and I apologise sincerely for my untimely curiosity; but we had only one opera-glass between us, and we had nobody posted on the top of the Carlton Club to listen to the speeches. Upon that you may rely." Elton stared at me for a moment, and then burst into a roar of laughter, in which I joined him. It was an immense relief to me to have got the burden off my soul; but I had received another proof of the frequency with which that long arm of coincidence asserts itself.