m restored to him.

"Yes, Madge," said Mr. Walkingshaw, his beatific smile still blander, "I
have indeed been spared."

He drew another deep whiff from his cigar, and added gently--

"For maybe a few more years of quiet usefulness."

PART II

CHAPTER I

Down the steep street where stands the office of Walkingshaw &
Gilliflower, careers a hat. It is a silk hat and of a large size, the
hat of a professional man of the most dignified standing and evident
brain capacity. Nothing could show better the innate depravity of March
winds than their choice of such a hat to play with. They had thousands
to choose from--bowlers, caps, wideawakes, all kinds of commonplace
head-gear--and here they have selected for their sport this cylinder of
silk, symbolical of all most worthy of the city's respect. It leaps and
bumps and slides, propelled by the breeze and the law of gravitation,
down the decorously paved hill, in company with a little cloud of dust
and some scraps of dirty paper. And behind it, now at a canter, now at a
panting trot, ambles the portly form of Mr. Heriot Walkingshaw. The very
devil must be in the wind to-day.

At the corner of Queen Street the hat met the full force of the
easterly blast, and bidding good-by to gravitation, turned at right
angles and skimmed for forty yards through space as though the brothers
Wright had mounted it. Then it resumed the action of a Rugby football,
pitching now on its end and now on its middle, and behaving accordingly
each time. Mr. Walkingshaw, perceiving that it was now bouncing in the
direction he desired to go, fell for a moment to a walk and looked
around for some assistant. But the only spectators within hail happened
to be two errand boys who had not seen a circus for some time and
evinced no desire to interrupt the entertainment. So off he started
again, his white spats twinkling beneath his flapping overcoat, and
covered the first fifty yards in such promising fashion that he was able
to strike the revolving rim a series of smart raps with his umbrella
before the wind had recovered its breath. Then suddenly up leapt the
hat, cannoned from a lamp-post on to the railings of the Queen Street
Gardens, from them across the pavement into the gutter, and there,
getting nicely on edge, careered like a hoop, with the thud of Heriot's
footsteps growing fainter behind.

Down the next cross street came two acquaintances of the Writer to the
Signet, and they stop