On the 20th of December, 1908, it rained incessantly in London, and well I recollect it. After lunch I sat in the club-window in St. James's Street, idly watching the drenched passers-by, many of them people who were up from the country to do their Christmas shopping. The outlook was a gloomy one; particularly so for myself, for I had arranged to spend Christmas with an aunt who had a pretty villa among the olives outside Nice, but that morning I had received a telegram from her saying that she was very unwell and asking me to postpone my visit. The club was practically deserted save for one or two old cronies. Every one had gone to country houses, Ray was spending Christmas with Vera's father at Portsmouth, and in view of the message I had received I felt dull and alone. It is astonishing how very lonely a man may be at Christmas in our great London, even though at other times he may possess hosts of friends. I had received fully a dozen invitations to country houses, all of which I had declined, and was now, alas! stranded, without hope of spending "A Merry Christmas," except in the lonely silence of my own bachelor chambers. So I smoked on, looking forth into the darkening gloom. The waiter switched on the light in the great smoking-room at last, and then drew the heavy curtains at all the long windows, shutting out the dismal scene. A man I knew, a hard-working member of Parliament, entered, threw himself down wearily and lit a cigar. Then, idler that I was, I began to gossip. He was going up to Perthshire by the 11.45 from Euston that night, he remarked. "Where are you spending Christmas?" he asked. "Don't know," I replied. "Probably at home." "You seem to have the hump, my dear fellow," he remarked, with a laugh, and then I confided to him the reason. At last, about six o'clock, I put on my overcoat and left the club. The rain had now stopped, therefore I decided to walk along to my rooms in Guilford Street. Hardly had I turned the corner into Piccadilly, when I heard a voice at my elbow uttering my name with a foreign accent. Turning quickly, I saw, to my great surprise, a man named Engler, whom I had known in Bremen. He was a clerk in the Deutsche Bank, opposite the Liebfrauen-Kirche, and popular in a certain circle in that Hanseatic city. "My dear Meester Jacox!" he exclaimed in broken English in his enthusiastic way. "My dear frendt. Well, well! who would have thought of meeting you. I am so ve-ry glad!" he cried. "I have only been in London since three days." I shook my friend's hand warmly, for a year ago, when I had spent some time beside the Weser watching two men I had followed from London, we had been extremely friendly. I told him that I was on my way to my rooms, and invited him in to have a chat. He gladly accompanied me, and when we were comfortably seated in my cosy sitting-room he began to relate to me all the latest news from Bremen and of several of my friends.