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“Johnny, did you notice anything remarkable about the old gentleman who was with me when we met on Young Street this evening?”

“Old gentleman! who? There was no one with you when I met you.”

“Think again, He and I were walking arm in arm, and you had passed us before you recognized me, and mentioned my name.”

He looked hard in my face for a moment, and then said positively:

“You are wrong, Willie. You were certainly alone when we met. You were walking slowly, and I must have noticed if any one had been with you.”

“It is you who are wrong,” I retorted, almost sternly. “I was accompanied by an elderly gentleman, who wore a great coat with fur collar and cuffs, and we were conversing earnestly together when you passed us.”

He hesitated an instant, and seemed to consider, but there was no shade of doubt on his face.

“Have it your own way, old boy,” he said. “All I can say is, that I saw no one but yourself, and neither did Charley Leitch, who was with me. After parting from you we commented upon your evident abstraction, and the sombre expression of your countenance, which we attributed to your having only recently heard of the sudden death of your Uncle Richard. If any old gentleman had been with you we could not possibly have failed to notice him.”

Without a single word by way of explanation or apology, I jumped from my seat, passed out into the hall, seized my hat, and left the house.

III.

Out into the street I rushed like a madman, banging the door after me. I knew that Johnny would follow me for an explanation, so I ran like lightning round the next corner, and thence down to Yonge Street. Then I dropped into a walk, regained my breath, and asked myself what I should do next.

Suddenly I bethought me of Dr. Marsden, an old friend of my uncle’s. I hailed a passing cab, and drove to his house. The doctor was in his consultation-room, and alone.

Of course he was surprised to see me, and gave expression to some appropriate words of sympathy at my bereavement. “But how is it that I see you so soon?” he asked–“I understood that you were not expected for some months to come.”

Then I began my story, which I related with great circumstantiality of detail, bringing it down to the moment of my arrival at his house. He listened with the closest attention, never interrupting me by a single exclamation until I had finished. Then he began to ask questions, some of which I thought strangely irrelevant.

“Have you enjoyed your usual good health during your residence abroad?”

“Never better in my life. I have not had a moment’s illness since you last saw me.”

“And how have you prospered in your business enterprises?”

“Reasonably well; but pray doctor, let us confine ourselves to the matter in hand. I have come for friendly, not professional, advice.”

“All in good time, my boy,” he calmly remarked. This was tantalizing. My strange narrative did not seem to have disturbed his serenity in the least degree.

“Did you have a pleasant passage?” he asked, after a brief pause. “The ocean, I believe, is generally rough at this time of year.”

“I felt a little squeamish for a day or two after leaving Melbourne,” I replied, “but I soon got over it, and it was not very bad even while it lasted. I am a tolerably good sailor.”

“And you have had no special ground of anxiety of late? At least not until you received this wonderful letter”–he added, with a perceptible contraction of his lips, as though trying to repress a smile.

Then I saw what he was driving at.

“Doctor,” I exclaimed, with some exasperation in my tone–“pray dismiss from your mind the idea that what I have told you is the result of diseased imagination. I am as sane as you are. The letter itself affords sufficient evidence that I am not quite such a fool as you take me for.”