e is no reason why I should conceal his name. It is one
honoured in this country, Sir Wilfrid Lawson. He looked in on his man
of business, which delayed me at the shop-window of which you have
spoken. I waited for him, and I thought I had him this time. But you
see I lost him in the Strand, after all."

"But the other, then," Andrew asked, "who was he?"

"Oh, I picked him up at Charing Cross. He was better dead."

"I think," said Andrew, hopefully, "that my estimate of the sacredness
of human life is sufficiently high for your purpose. If that is the
only point--"

"Ah, they all say that until they join. I remember an excellent young
man who came among us for a time. He seemed discreet beyond his years,
and we expected great things of him. But it was the old story. For
young men the cause is as demoralizing as boarding schools are for
girls."

"What did he do?"

"It went to his head. He took a bedroom in Pall Mall and sat at the
window with an electric rifle picking them off on the door-steps of the
clubs. It was a noble idea, but of course it imperilled the very
existence of the society. He was a curate."

"What became of him?" asked Andrew.

"He is better dead," said the stranger, softly.

"And the Society you speak of, what is it?"

"The S. D. W. S. P."

"The S. D. W. S. P.?"

"Yes, the Society for Doing Without Some People."

They were in Holborn, but turned up Southampton Row for quiet.

"You have told me," said the stranger, now speaking rapidly, "that at
times you have felt tempted to take your life, that life for which you
will one day have to account. Suicide is the coward's refuge. You are
miserable? When a young man knows that, he is happy. Misery is but
preparing for an old age of delightful reminiscence. You say that
London has no work for you, that the functions to which you looked
forward are everywhere discharged by another. That need not drive you
to despair. If it proves that someone should die, does it necessarily
follow that the someone is you?"

"But is not the other's life as sacred as mine?"

"That is his concern."

"Then you would have me--"

"Certainly not. You are a boxer without employment, whom I am showing
what to hit. In such a case as yours the Society would be represented
by a third party, whose decision would be final. As an interested
person you would have to stand aside."

"I don't understand."

"The arbitrator would settle if you shoul