erected ere he left the chambers. 'Why that?'
reflected Gideon. 'It seems entirely irresponsible.' And drawing near,
he gingerly demolished it. 'A key,' he thought. 'Why that? And why
so conspicuously placed?' He made the circuit of the instrument, and
perceived the keyhole at the back. 'Aha! this is what the key is for,'
said he. 'They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger.' And
with that he turned the key and raised the lid.

In what antics of agony, in what fits of flighty resolution, in what
collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous
to enquire too closely.

That trill of tiny song with which the eaves-birds of London welcome
the approach of day found him limp and rumpled and bloodshot, and with a
mind still vacant of resource. He rose and looked forth unrejoicingly on
blinded windows, an empty street, and the grey daylight dotted with the
yellow lamps. There are mornings when the city seems to awake with a
sick headache; this was one of them; and still the twittering reveille
of the sparrows stirred in Gideon's spirit.

'Day here,' he thought, 'and I still helpless! This must come to an
end.' And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket, and set
forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth
time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, and regrets. To call
in the police, to give up the body, to cover London with handbills
describing John Dickson and Ezra Thomas, to fill the papers with
paragraphs, Mysterious Occurrence in the Temple--Mr Forsyth admitted to
bail, this was one course, an easy course, a safe course; but not, the
more he reflected on it, not a pleasant one. For, was it not to publish
abroad a number of singular facts about himself? A child ought to
have seen through the story of these adventurers, and he had gaped and
swallowed it. A barrister of the least self-respect should have refused
to listen to clients who came before him in a manner so irregular, and
he had listened. And O, if he had only listened; but he had gone upon
their errand--he, a barrister, uninstructed even by the shadow of
a solicitor--upon an errand fit only for a private detective; and
alas!--and for the hundredth time the blood surged to his brow--he had
taken their money! 'No,' said he, 'the thing is as plain as St Paul's. I
shall be dishonoured! I have smashed my career for a five-pound note.'

Between the possibility of being hanged in all innocenc