“Yes; I was told by one who knows, but wanted to keep it quiet, that the tailor was seen coming out of your bakehouse window at about one o’clock in the morning.” “And you never told me!” cried Coglin, reproachfully. “I can’t tell you even yet; I only say I think it,” said Burfoot, cautiously. Coglin was conquered at last, and he and Burfoot left the spot arm-in-arm and fast friends for life. Some of these facts came out long after, when I had the tailor in my hands on another charge, and some were given me by Coglin himself. He is in business still, and prospering in a town on the opposite side of the Forth, and Burfoot often goes through to spend a few days there with his firm friend, golfing on a nice links near the place. As he knows all about the baker’s misconceptions and plans for his punishment, and the names are all changed here, I have decided that the giving of the details can do no harm now, and may at the same time teach those seeking revenge that it is possible for punishment intended for another to drop very neatly on to their own shoulders. ONE LESS TO EAT. The number of mysterious disappearances in great cities can be calculated upon with almost the same certainty as the death rate. A very few of these are accounted for; a body is found and identified, or a man vanished is found to have been in difficulties, and it is shrewdly or rashly surmised that he has fled to escape the consequences; but the majority of the cases pass into the great unknown, so far as either police or public are concerned. No. 7 Hill Place, at the South Side, leads to a back court of wretched dwellings occupied by the very poor. At the west side of that court is a block or “land” of houses which are now rather worse than they were at the time of which I write, for a theatre has been built up against the back windows, almost shutting out the light of day from one side of the building. At that time the top windows looked into an auctioneer’s yard, and, having a better share of light than the lower flats, were considered rather respectable abodes for working men. In one of these lived George Mossman, a journeyman baker. The house consisted of two rooms, and had been at one time very nicely furnished; but on the Saturday night of which I write the two places were almost empty, for Mossman had been off work for many months with a poisoned hand, which refused to heal, and so kept him and his wife and family “living on the furniture.” At first Mossman, who was of a cheery, blithe disposition, had made a joke of his disabled hand, and laughingly declared that he had “an income in his hand, but nane in his pouch;” but as month after month went past, and the hand showed no signs of healing, joking was hushed on his lips. Hunger, starvation, and perhaps death stared them in the face; for Mossman shared the common horror of pauperism, and would have dropped dead before he could have applied at the Poorhouse for a dole.