“No Hopkins!” the poor fellow interrupted, with a derisive laugh. “You shall hear all about it. No Hopkins! Haven’t I lived with him? Hasn’t he been tempting me to every devilry? It was Hopkins who made me steal the picture, the book, the bicycle money; he gave me the bad sovereign for Mackary, he’s got a bag full. The man was bothering me. I made a mistake at first to pay him anything on account--you lose their respect directly you make a cash payment. Hopkins! And he was egging me on to--what do you think? To murder you, old man. To murder you, because you’ve got Rogers’ “Italy,” with plates after Turner, and he wanted it. The very word Italy is enough for him.” This was startling. I had reason to be grateful that I had pricked the Hopkins bubble in time. Orchard continued, dropping his voice and looking up now and then at the ceiling, and putting his head aside in a listening attitude: “I dodged him this morning. I went off to Chesham alone, meaning to think the thing out quietly. I’d made up my mind to emigrate, if I could raise the passage money without his suspecting it. And then--well, I might have known--there were steps behind me; his face over my shoulder. He said,--he knows my very thoughts,-- “‘Emigration would be the worst thing in the world for us, dear boy. They want muscles, not art, in a new country.’ “It was more than I could stand. I shoved him into the Chess when he was off his guard. It gave me positive honest enjoyment to see the water eddying over him.” I took his hand and shook it heartily. “Shoved him into the Chess! You are sure he sank? It is the best bit of news I’ve heard for a long time. The fellow was a bad lot evidently--what is worse, he was a confounded nuisance. You haven’t been the same man since he shared your rooms.” I thought it wiser, just at the moment, not to irritate and excite him by again disputing Hopkins. It was really a remarkable business. The delusion was so perfect, so realistic. From the moment Orchard complained that he could hear Hopkins taking off his boots through the wall, I had never doubted the man’s existence--no one had doubted. Yet it was all a delusion. There was no Hopkins. Consequently, Orchard had not cheated at nap, had not betrayed Mackary by a bad sovereign, had not stolen the book with the fine plates nor the picture that he believed to be a Simms, had not spent his nephew’s ten pounds. But he might have murdered me if the delusion had gone on long enough. Hopkins! Whiffin! I began to wonder whether Whiffin really existed or whether he also was a myth. It did not matter much. Orchard said tremulously: