On these occasions, the doctor, while he kept the open street, got on swimmingly; but the dark and somewhat tortuous staircase which he had to ascend to reach his domicile--the said domicile being on the third flat--used to annoy him sadly. When very much overcome, as, we grieve to say it, the doctor very frequently was, the labour it cost him to make out the three stairs was very serious. It was long protracted, too; it took him an immense time; for, conscious of his unsteady condition, he climbed slowly and deliberately, but we cannot add quietly; for his shuffling, kicking, and blowing, to which he frequently added a muttered objurgation or two on missing a step, as he struggled up the dark stair, were distinctly audible to the whole land. By merely listening, they could trace his whole progress with the utmost accuracy, from the moment he entered the close, until the slam of a door announced that the doctor was housed. They could hear him pass along the close--they could hear him commence his laborious ascent--they could hear him struggling upwards, and, anon, the point of his boot striking against a step, which he had taken more surely than necessary--they could hear him gain the landing-place at his own door, signified by a peculiar shuffle, which almost seemed to express the intelligence that a great work had been accomplished--they could hear the doctor fumbling amongst his keys and loose coin for his check-key, and again fumbling with this check-key about its aperture in the door, the hitting of the latter being a tedious and apparently most difficult achievement--and, lastly, they could hear the door flung to with great violence, announcing the finale of the doctor's progress. Over and above the more ordinary and obvious difficulties attending the doctor's ascent on such occasions, and under such circumstances as those of which we speak, there was one of a peculiar and particularly annoying nature. This was the difficulty he found in discriminating his own landing-place from the others,--a difficulty which was greatly increased by the entire similarity of all the landing-places on the stair, the doors in all of which were perfect counterparts of each other, and stood exactly in the same relative positions. This difficulty often nonplussed him sadly; but he at length fell upon a method of overcoming it, and of ensuring his making attempts on no door but his own. He counted the landing-places as he gained them, pausing a second or two on each to draw breath, and impress its number on his memory,--one, two, three, then out with the check-key.