night,
John slept the sleep of infancy. He was wakened by the maid, as it might
have been ten years ago, tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was
painting the east; and as the window was to the back of the house, it
shone into the room with many strange colours of refracted light.
Without, the houses were all cleanly roofed with snow; the garden walls
were coped with it a foot in height; the greens lay glittering. Yet
strange as snow had grown to John during his years upon the Bay of San
Francisco, it was what he saw within that most affected him. For it was
to his own room that Alexander had been promoted; there was the old
paper with the device of flowers, in which a cunning fancy might yet
detect the face of Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John's former dominie;
there was the old chest of drawers; there were the chairs--one, two,
three--three as before. Only the carpet was new, and the litter of
Alexander's clothes and books and drawing materials, and a
pencil-drawing on the wall, which (in John's eyes) appeared a marvel of
proficiency.

He was thus lying, and looking, and dreaming, hanging, as it were,
between two epochs of his life, when Alexander came to the door, and
made his presence known in a loud whisper. John let him in, and jumped
back into the warm bed.

"Well, John," said Alexander, "the cablegram is sent in your name, and
twenty words of answer paid. I have been to the cab office and paid
your cab, even saw the old gentleman himself, and properly apologised.
He was mighty placable, and indicated his belief you had been drinking.
Then I knocked up old MacEwen out of bed, and explained affairs to him
as he sat and shivered in a dressing-gown. And before that I had been to
the High Street, where they have heard nothing of your dead body, so
that I incline to the idea that you dreamed it."

"Catch me!" said John.

"Well, the police never do know anything," assented Alexander; "and at
any rate, they have despatched a man to inquire and to recover your
trousers and your money, so that really your bill is now fairly clean;
and I see but one lion in your path--the governor."

"I'll be turned out again, you'll see," said John dismally.

"I don't imagine so," returned the other; "not if you do what Flora and
I have arranged; and your business now is to dress, and lose no time
about it. Is your watch right? Well, you have a quarter of an hour. By
five minutes before the half-hour you must be at table, in you