"You're right: you're right. If as respectable a liver as him ends that way--well, well!" In this strain and with such comments (exceedingly natural under the circumstances) did his fellow-citizens discuss the remarkable thing that befell Mr. Walkingshaw. And yet they could see only the outward symptoms or manifestations of this thing. Now that the full circumstances are made public, it will be generally conceded that few well-authenticated occurrences have ever at first sight seemed less probable. This has actually been advanced as an argument for their suppression; but since enough has already leaked out to whet the public curiosity, and indeed to lead to damaging misconceptions in a city so unused to phenomena other than meteorological, it is considered wisest that the unvarnished facts should be placed in the hands of a scrupulous editor and allowed to speak for themselves. PART I THE PRODIGAL FATHER CHAPTER I At a certain windy corner in the famous city of Edinburgh, a number of brass plates were affixed to the framework of a door. On the largest and brightest of them appeared the legend "Walkingshaw & Gilliflower, W.S."; and on no other sheet of brass in Scotland were more respectable names inscribed. For the benefit of the Sassenach and other foreigners, it may be explained that "W.S." is a condensation of "Writers to the Signet"--a species of beatified solicitor holding a position so esteemed, so enviable, and so intensely reputable that the only scandal previously whispered in connection with a member of this class proved innocently explicable upon the discovery that he was affianced to the lady's aunt. The building in which the firm had their office formed one end of an austere range of dark stone houses overlooking a street paved with cubes of granite and confronted by a precisely similar line of houses on the farther side. The whole sloped somewhat steeply down a hill, up which and down which a stimulating breeze careered and eddied during three hundred days of the year. Had you thrust your head out of the office windows and looked down the street, you could have seen, generally beneath a gray sky and through a haze of smoke, an inspiring glimpse of distant sea with yet more distant hills beyond. But Mr. Walkingshaw had no time for looking gratis out of his window to see unprofitable views. The gray street had been the background to nearly fifty years of dignified labor on behalf of the most respectable clients.