placed halfway down. It felt much colder as he came
close to the water, and the sudden roll of the river sounded awesome. A
few steps from the bottom he stopped.

"If there was any good in living!" he said. "But there isn't. What lies
before me? I am a hopeless, purposeless, whisky-sodden fool. There's
nothing to live for."

He went nearer the river.

His attention was drawn to a shapeless something which the river had
swept to the bottom step, and which, as the tide had receded, had left
lying there. He went closer to it and examined it.

It was the dead body of a man.

He turned quickly and retraced his steps, and then stopped.

"He's had the pluck to do it," he muttered; "he must have thrown himself
in farther up the river. The tide has washed him there and left him
stranded. Poor beggar, I wonder who he is?"

He went down again and looked at the gruesome thing lying there. He lay
in the shadow of the bridge, and the moon's rays did not reach him.

"I wonder who he is," repeated Leicester.

Almost mechanically, and with a steady hand, he struck a match and
examined the body.

"It might have been me," he muttered. "About my own age and build. His
clothes are good, too. I suppose this thing was what is called a
gentleman." He laughed quietly and grimly. A sort of gruesome curiosity
possessed him, and a wild fancy flashed into his mind. "I wonder if he's
left any mark of his identity?" he said, whereupon he lit another match
and made a closer examination. Yes, the thing's hands belonged to what
was once a man of leisure. It is true they were discoloured and swollen,
but they had been carefully manicured. Without a shudder he examined the
pockets. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in them--not even a
pocket-handkerchief. The shirt was fastened at the wrists by a pair of
gold sleeve-links, but they bore no marks of any sort. He unfastened the
links and looked at the inside of the cuffs, but there was no name
written on them. He fastened them again. He examined the dead man's
collar. Again it was without name. Evidently the suicide had taken
trouble to leave no traces of his identity behind.

He took another look at the face. Yes, it might have been himself, if he
had been in the water a long time. It was the face of a young man, as
far as he could judge, between thirty and forty. It was clean-shaven,
too, just as his own was. It was true it was much distorted and
discoloured; evidently the poor wretch ha