"Here you are! Memoranda in the case of Benjamin Biggs, cashier in the Limpid Water Company, charged with embezzlement. Fine game he kept up, did Mr. Biggs. Salary about two hundred a year, and lived at the rate of ten thousand. Beautiful place out of town, just opposite Bobbington Lock, horses, carriages, and what you please. I was engaged in Biggs' matter, and I had been up to Bobbington one afternoon--for there was a notion just then that Biggs hadn't got clear off and might come home again--so I thought I'd take a lodging and hang about the village for a week or two. It was pleasant summer weather, and I've a liking for the river and for such a place as Bushey Park, though not with many opportunities of seeing much of either. I had been through Biggs' house, and was standing in Messenger's boat-yard, looking at the parties putting off in the water, when a voice close to my ear says, 'Hallo, Tatlow! What's up?' and looking round I saw Mr. Netherton Whiffle, the leading junior at the Bailey, and the most rising man at the C.C.C. I scarcely knew him at first, for he had got on a round straw hat instead of his wig, and a tight-fitting jersey instead of his gown; and when I recognised him and told him what business I had come down upon, he only laughed, and said that Biggs knew more than me and all Scotland-yard put together; and the best thing that I could do was to go into the 'Anglers' and put my name to what I liked at his expense. He's a very pleasant fellow, Mr. Whiffle; and while I was drinking something iced I told him about my wanting a lodging, and he recommended me to a very respectable little cottage kept by the mother of his gardener. A pretty place it was to not looking on the river, but standing in a nice neatly-kept garden, with the big trees of Bushey Park at the back of you, and the birds singing beautiful. I fancy, when I am superannuated I should like a place of that sort for myself and Mrs. T. Nice rooms too; the lodgings, a bedroom and sitting-room, but a cut above my means. I was saying so to the old woman--motherly old creature she was--as we were looking round the bedroom, when I caught sight of something which fixed my attention at once. It was an old black box, like a child's school-trunk, with on the outside lid 'E. M.' in brass letters, and a railway label of the G.N.R., 'Leeds to London,' still sticking on it. Something told me I had 'struck ile,' as the Yankees say; and I asked the old woman to whom that box belonged. 'To her,' she said, she supposed; 'leastways it had been there for many months, left behind by a lodger who had gone away and never sent for it.' It took a little hot rum-and-water to get the lodger's story out of that old lady, sir; not a refreshing drink on a summer's day, but required to be gone through in the course of duty, and it was worth it, as you will see.