“You haven’t heard the worst. I knocked him over into the Chess. I walked into Chesham and had a feed--never enjoyed anything so much in my life, never felt so free and hopeful. I got back to the Inn about ten. As I crossed the square I saw a light move across my window. It struck me as rather odd, but then I remembered that Mrs. Neaves had told me she was coming back to fetch her apron, or a bundle of newspapers she was going to sell at the butcher’s, I forget which. It does not matter--nothing matters. I went upstairs. I let myself in with the latchkey. The passage was dark, but there was a steady light under the sitting-room door. No sound. Only the steady yellow light. I went in. As I live, he was sitting there. Hopkins! the man I had drowned. I staggered to the first chair and sat like a fool, staring at him. He was cutting a portrait out of a ragged pamphlet he bought yesterday at the shop near Tottenham Court Road; he’s making an illustrated copy of some book or the other. I forget the title; I forget everything. When he had done he turned round deliberately and looked at me. He didn’t seem annoyed in the least. He actually didn’t seem conscious of that dip in the Chess. I wanted to ask him how he got out, but I couldn’t, to save my soul, speak one word. He was sitting there calmly cutting pictures out of a book. The man I had drowned! I saw him drown. I took devilish good care not to leave the river until I was sure. Yet there he sat. He said: “‘Which train did you come back by? I took the 8.05.’ “I couldn’t bear it any more. I came down to you. What am I to do? How am I to get rid of him? You see, I am absolutely in his power. He owns me. He could hang me if he liked.” “I’ll come up and have a talk with him.” We went up to his set together. The sitting room was perfectly dark. “I expect he’s gone to bed,” said Orchard. We looked into the bedroom. It was the only bedroom, but Orchard had put up a second bed, a camp. The sheets on it were dingy, but absolutely unruffled. The bed had never been slept in. He had provided a second washstand--one of those skeleton, brightly painted metal things. It was covered with dust. “He’s gone out,” I said encouragingly. “You get to bed and I’ll sit up and wait for him to come back.” Orchard undressed as docilely as a child, and stretched himself with a groan of fatigue beneath the sheets. His eyes were wide open--on the empty camp bedstead with the smoothly turned down sheet and the gayly striped blanket which served as a quilt. “You’d better go back to your own place, old man,” he said suddenly. “I shall be all right. Head’s been a bit queer, but a sleep will make me all right. I’m very sleepy. It would bother me to know you were waiting, and there is no necessity. Good-night.” His eyes closed drowsily, then opened, and fixed themselves on that empty bed. “I want you to go,” he said more positively. “I shan’t get to sleep until you do.”