Thus I felt that I was handsomely provided for; and, upon the whole, I think the average person who has reached middle life, at all events, would find it easy to regard with understanding tolerance the fact that I was rather proud of what I had accomplished. It really was something, all the attendant circumstances being taken into account. But, perhaps, it is not always safe to trust too implicitly in the genial old faith that Providence helps those who help themselves; though the complementary theory, that Providence does not help those who do not help themselves, may be pretty generally correct. Maybe I was too complaisant. (If I have a superstition to-day, it is that a jealous Nemesis keeps vengeful watch upon human complaisance.) On a certain Thursday morning, and in a mood of some elation, I walked into the bank to close my account. The amount was two hundred and forty-seven pounds ten shillings. Of this some twenty-five pounds was destined to complete the payment that morning of my passage money. The cashier was able to furnish me with Bank of England notes for two hundred pounds, and the balance, for convenience and ready-money, I drew in Australian notes and gold. Never before having handled at one time a greater sum than, say, five-and-twenty pounds, it was with a sense of being a good deal of a capitalist that I buttoned my coat as I emerged from the bank, and set out for the shipping-office. The sun shone warmly. My arrangements were all completed. I was going home. Yes, it was with something of an air, no doubt, that I took the pavement, humming as I passed along the bright side of Pitt Street. All my life I have had a fondness for byways. Main thoroughfares between the two great arteries, Pitt and George Street, were at my service; but I preferred a narrow alley which brings one to the back premises of Messrs. Hunt and Carton's, the wholesale stationers. Bearing to the left through that firm's stableyard, one passes through a little arched opening which debouches upon Tinckton Street, whence in twenty paces one reaches George Street at a point close to the office for which I was bound. I can see now the sleek-sided lorry horses in Hunt and Carton's yard, and I recall precisely the odour of the place as I passed through it that morning; the heavy, flat wads of blue-wrapped paper, and the fluttering bits of straw; the stamp of a draught horse's foot on cobble-stones. I saw the black, clean-cut shadow of the arched place. I turned half round to note the cause of a soft sound behind me. And just then came the dull roar of a detonation, in the same instant that a huge weight crashed upon me, and I fell down, down, down into the very bowels of the earth.... * * * * * 'No actual danger, I think. Excuse me, nurse!' Those were the first words I heard. The first I spoke, I believe, were: 'I suppose the arch collapsed?'