o the fastening of the door; and what he
saw plucked him to his feet. The thing locked with a spring; once the
door was closed, the bolt shot of itself; and without a key there was no
means of entering from the road.

He saw himself compelled to one of two distasteful and perilous
alternatives: either to shut the door altogether and set his portmanteau
out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the door
ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in and
stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, his
mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved.
He peered out, and down the long road: it lay dead empty. He went to
the corner of the by-road that comes by way of Dean; there also not a
passenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide of
his affairs; and he drew the door as close as he durst, slipped a pebble
in the chink, and made off downhill to find a cab.

Half-way down a gate opened, and a troop of Christmas children sallied
forth in the most cheerful humour, followed more soberly by a smiling
mother.

"And this is Christmas Day!" thought John; and could have laughed aloud
in tragic bitterness of heart.

CHAPTER VII

A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB

In front of Donaldson's Hospital, John counted it good fortune to
perceive a cab a great way off, and by much shouting and waving of his
arm, to catch the notice of the driver. He counted it good fortune, for
the time was long to him till he should have done for ever with the
Lodge; and the farther he must go to find a cab, the greater the chance
that the inevitable discovery had taken place, and that he should return
to find the garden full of angry neighbours. Yet when the vehicle drew
up he was sensibly chagrined to recognise the port-wine cabman of the
night before. "Here," he could not but reflect, "here is another link in
the Judicial Error."

The driver, on the other hand, was pleased to drop again upon so liberal
a fare; and as he was a man--the reader must already have perceived--of
easy, not to say familiar, manners, he dropped at once into a vein of
friendly talk, commenting on the weather, on the sacred season, which
struck him chiefly in the light of a day of liberal gratuities, on the
chance which had reunited him to a pleasing customer, and on the fact
that John had been (as he was pleased to call it) visibly "on the
ran-dan" the night before.