He was seen within a few hundred yards of that bank by an acquaintance, but he never cashed the cheque, and he was never heard of again. For fifteen years his widow refused to abandon hope. She always thought that one day he would come back, and night after night, when the house was closed, she would sit listening for the footstep that she believed one day she should hear again. She is still living. A little while ago I had a letter from her son. "The mystery of my father's fate," he wrote, "is still unsolved." It is impossible to conclude that this unfortunate man meant to disappear. He would have cashed the cheque had flight been in his mind. Men who intend to live anywhere must have money. The cheque was never presented. For his own personal use he had for weeks previously drawn nothing out of the bank. What became of him? Was he lured down some byway and murdered for his watch and chain and whatever he had in his pocket, and his body disposed of in the mysterious way that murdered people are got rid of even to this day? Or was it a case of dual identity? Did he, forgetting who he was, think himself some one else, and live and work as some one else in some other part of England until he died in the natural course of events? That _may_ happen, and does sometimes account for mysterious disappearances. A man well-known in the theatrical profession some years ago--the touring manager of a popular London lessee--once disappeared mysteriously. His accounts were in order. He had paid the company and remitted the balance to his chief. And having done so he disappeared. The company waited for him at a railway station, and waited in vain. All sorts of conjectures were indulged in, and his friends and relatives were untiring in their efforts to ascertain his fate. Late one night an actor going home to his residence on the south side of the water turned up a side street, attracted by a little crowd in it. A gang of roughs were around two men who were fighting. The actor stopped for a moment to "study character," and then went on up the side street, knowing that at the top of it he would get into the main thoroughfare again. Near the top he came to a public-house. Outside the house a poorly-clad street musician was playing a cornet--none too well--and collecting coppers from the people in the bar. The actor looked at the comet-player for a moment, and then, with a cry of astonishment, touched him on the shoulder and called him by name. It was the touring manager whose mysterious disappearance had been the talk of the profession. The poor fellow was absolutely ignorant of his own identity. It was some time afterwards before old familiar surroundings and the voices and faces of old friends revived in his brain the memory of the past and gave him back his lost identity.