it hung above the
door of that identical public-house at which we had found our boatman,
and there at the doorway, glass in hand, was the hackney driver who had
brought us down. The man looked amazed to see me, and was more surprised
still when I hailed him. He undertook immediately to drive me back to
town; helped me into the cab, wrapped me up from head to foot in a rough
oilcloth, got me a stiff glass of hot brandy-and-water, and drove away.

The journey down had been long, but the return seemed actually
interminable, and it seems so now in my recollection of it. I plead
guilty to a confusion of mind which for a while left me powerless to
think about anything. Notwithstanding the wraps with which the driver
had supplied me, the cold of the March night pierced me to the bone, and
the brandy I had taken seemed rather to stupify than to revive me; but
when at last I did get home, and Hinge had helped me to a scorching
rub-down with rough towels, and had assisted me to dress in dry raiment,
I felt more myself again, and sent downstairs for the cabman, who was
still waiting there for his fare. The man could tell me absolutely
nothing of any value, and I soon found out that the fellow was as much
surprised at the turn events had taken as I was myself. A servant girl,
it seemed, had come upon the street and had told him that he was wanted
a few doors off. He gave me correctly and with no unwillingness Brunow's
address, and told me that the gentleman who chartered him had bidden
him to drive first to the Italian restaurant, and then to our ultimate
destination. I took the man's number and dismissed him with a handsome
gratuity. Hinge at first wanted to insist on my immediate retirement to
bed, but with every moment that went by I felt better, and when I had
drunk a cup of his excellent coffee I was quite myself again, except in
so far as all the events of the night seemed to have a curiously unreal
and dreamlike feeling about them. The more I turned the thing over in my
mind the more I felt inclined to doubt Brunow's _bonafides_, and yet our
long acquaintance and the downright horrible character of the betrayal
which had really been committed made the doubt seem so criminal that
I tried to drive it away. The more I refused to harbor it the more
emphatically it came back again. I recalled Brunow at every instant at
which I had consciously or unconsciously observed him, and I _knew_ that
there had somehow been a burden on his