‘Well, Would you mind looking for me? My coachman can’t see the names written up at the corners from the road, and I can’t tramp up and down the neighbourhood in the rain—I should get wet.’ ‘What about me?’ asked Marston, with an offended tone in his voice. The occupant of the carriage gave a short little laugh. ‘My good friend, I don’t think a little more rain will do you much harm; you don’t appear to have been under an umbrella lately.’ Marston remembered that he was a penniless outcast, soaked to the skin; for the moment he had forgotten it, and fancied he was a gentleman walking home. ‘What do you want me to look for?’ he said, altering his tone. ‘Little Queer Street, No. 15; and if you find it I’ll give you a shilling.’ Marston walked up one side street and down another, peering through the fog towards those wonderful arrangements in white and black with which the Board of Works are good enough to label the street corners, and which are so high up and so small that an ordinary-sighted person requires a ladder and a magnifying glass before he can tell what they are, and at night even this would be insufficient unless accompanied by an electric light. After much wandering up and down, and straining of the eyeballs and cross-examination of a solitary policeman, who was standing up out of the wet, and enjoying a quiet pipe down a particularly deserted side street, Marston discovered where Little Queer Street was, and ascertained which side of the way and which end was honoured by the presence of that No. 15, which was evidently about to be visited by a gentleman who kept his carriage. He came back with the intelligence, and communicated it to the coachman. ‘Wait a minute, Cook, I haven’t rewarded this poor fellow for his trouble,’ said the doctor, for the coachman was whipping up the horses, without waiting for such a trifle. The doctor fumbled first in his trousers pockets, then in his waistcoat, and then in his overcoat. ‘Cook,’ he exclaimed, presently, ‘have you got a shilling?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Dear me, how very peculiar! no more have I. My good man I’m very sorry—most extraordinary thing—but I’ve come out without any money. Here, however, is my card. Call to-morrow and I will leave a shilling with the servant for you. Drive on, Cook.’ Cook, the coachman, whipped up his horses and shot off, splashing Marston with mud, and leaving him crestfallen and disappointed in the middle of the road, with a card in his hand. ‘My luck!’ he said, as the light of the carriage vanished in the mist; ‘my infernal luck! That shilling would have been a bed and breakfast. I earned that shilling, and I never wanted it more in my life. What the dickens does a two-horse doctor do here, I wonder! I thought he was sent by Providence to give me a shilling, at first. Bah! Providence turned me up long ago. Let’s look at the card.’ He came out of the roadway, and stood under a lamp-post to read the name of his debtor.