"Yes, dinner. It's easy enough for you to sneer, but if you'd been living on toast and water, which, to some extent, during the last four days, I practically have been doing, the prospect of a little decent food would even appeal to you." She shrugged her shoulders. "And you're a man? As, I suppose, is the individual who has just taken himself out of the house." "I should be obliged, Lucy, if you would not institute comparison between that vagabond and me. I don't like it. In the morning I will follow your advice. I will go to a lawyer, and I will place myself unreservedly in his hands. Just now the thing is out of the question; I shouldn't find one, to begin with; and, in the second place, I'm hungry." We had dinner. Or at least I had dinner, and she looked on at me while I was eating it. Her companionship did not tend to increase one's appetite. She sat in front of me, bolt upright on her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, eating nothing, and saying nothing either. She seemed to be counting every mouthful which I took, as though I was doing something of which I ought to be ashamed. I don't know what there was to be ashamed of. I don't see why a man shouldn't eat, even if he is going to be hanged, especially if he is innocent as a babe unborn, and is about to be made the victim of a judicial murder, as I bade fair to be. A knock which came at the front door just as I was finishing came as a positive relief. I should have had words with Lucy if she had continued to sit, like an unblinking statue, in front of me much longer. The servant announced that the knocker was Mr. Keeley. Adolphus Keeley and I on Fridays play chess together, all through the winter--one week at his house, the next at mine. Owing to my illness, and the preoccupation of my mind and body, I had forgotten that this was Friday, and that it was his turn to come to me. When Keeley was announced Lucy looked inquiringly at me. "Shall I tell Jane to ask Mr. Keeley to excuse you?" "Certainly not." I had not been by any means looking forward to the pleasurable prospects of a _tête-à-tête_. Keeley came as a relief. "Tell Mr. Keeley I will be with him in a minute." Adolphus Keeley, to be frank, and to use an idiom, is not so wise as they make them. He is well intentioned, but dull. I have known him pretty well my whole life long, and I can stand as much of him as any one. But that night I found him particularly trying. He persisted in keeping the conversation in a groove for which I had a strong distaste. One of his weak points is an inability to see a hint in time to take it. I not only dropped hints, I threw them at him as hard as I could; but I threw them all away. I had a dreadful time. In preferring his society to Lucy's I had stepped from the frying-pan into the fire. He began as soon as I was in the room. "Well, Tennant, what do you think about the murder?" "Murder? What murder? "The Three Bridges tragedy; isn't it a dreadful thing?"