robust health and the light that dwelt about him startled its pinched shabbiness into solitude. He set the tumbler of flowers upon the window-ledge, and closing the window, made his toilet and returned to the sitting-room. Then, having banked up the fire, and set the matches in such a position that he could easily find them, he blew out the lamp, left his chambers, and ran down the tortuous stairs. As he turned the last corner a door clanged noisily, and the next thing of which he was conscious was that he was struggling in the embrace of a stranger whom he had doubled up in an angle of the wall. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said gaspingly; ‘I stumbled.’ ‘You did,’ responded the stranger, gasping also. ‘Rather heavily. It was lucky you had something soft to fall on.’ Philip began to make apologies. The stranger, breathless still, but jovially polite, begged him not to mention it. He was a tallish young man, broad set, and a little too fleshy for his years. He had a cleanshaven face, healthily pallid, the whitest of teeth, and a most frank, engaging, and contagious smile. ‘Pray don’t say anything more about it,’ he said in answer to Philip’s reiterated apologies. ‘You are not hurt, I hope?’ ‘No, thanks; but I’m afraid you are.’ ‘Not at all. It was sharp for a minute; but I am all right now. The stairs are very inconvenient, especially to strangers.’ ‘I haven’t even that excuse for my clumsiness, said Philip; ‘for I am living here.’ ‘Indeed; then we are neighbours, and should know each other. Rather an informal kind of introduction, eh?’ The stranger said this with a mellow laugh and a flash of his white teeth. He opened his overcoat as he spoke, and produced a card-case, Philip catching the gleam of a gold-studded shirt-front as he did so. ‘That’s my name, John Barter; and these are my offices.’ The outer oak, cracked and blistered to the likeness of an ancient tar-barrel, bore an inscription, dim with long years--‘Fellowship, Freemantle, and Barter’--and the names were repeated on the doorpost at the entrance. ‘I have no card,’ said Philip, accepting the stranger’s. ‘My name is Bommaney--Philip Bom-maney;’ Mr. Barter’s smiling face was unchanged, though he gave a slight but perceptible start at the name, and repeated it. ‘Do you know it?’ asked Philip. To the ears of his companion there was something of a challenge in the tone. ‘It is not a common name.’ ‘No. Not a common name. I think I have heard it somewhere.’ They were under the archway by this time, in the brief shelter of which the sanguine-faced, red-waist-coated lodge-keeper was taking his nightly constitutional. They answered the touch of the hat with which he saluted them. ‘Which is your way?’ asked Mr. Barter. ‘Westward,’ said Phil. ‘Mine is east,’ said Barter, ‘so we part here. We are bound to meet again before long. Good-night.’ ‘Good-night, and many thanks for taking my clumsiness in such good part.’