after
this very summer--a fellow who went off from Whitbury with some players.
I know Briggs used to go to the theatre with him as a boy--what was his
name? He tried acting, but did not succeed; and then became a
scene-shifter, or something of the kind, at the Adelphi. He has some
complaint, I forget what, which made him an out-patient at St.
Mumpsimus's, some months every year. I know that he was there this
summer, for I wrote to ask, at Briggs's request, and Briggs sent him a
sovereign through me."

"But what makes you fancy that he can have taken shelter with such a
man, and one who knows his secret?"

"It is but a chance: but he may have done it from the mere feeling of
loneliness--just to hold by some one whom he knows in this great
wilderness; especially a man in whose eyes he will be a great man, and
to whom he has done a kindness; still, it is the merest chance."

"We will take it, nevertheless, forlorn hope though it be."

They took a cab to the hospital, and, with some trouble, got the man's
name and address, and drove in search of him. They had some difficulty
in finding his abode, for it was up an alley at the back of Drury Lane,
in the top of one of those foul old houses which hold a family in every
room; but, by dint of knocking at one door and the other, and bearing
meekly much reviling consequent thereon, they arrived, "_per modum
tollendi_" at a door which must be the right one, as all the rest were
wrong.

"Does John Barker live here?" asks Thurnall, putting his head in
cautiously for fear of drunken Irishmen, who might be seized with the
national impulse to "slate" him.

"What's that to you?" answers a shrill voice from among soapsuds and
steaming rags.

"Here is a gentleman wants to speak to him."

"So do a many as won't have that pleasure, and would be little the
better for it if they had. Get along with you, I knows your lay."

"We really want to speak to him, and to pay him, if he will--"

"Go along! I'm up to the something to your advantage dodge, and to the
mustachio dodge too. Do you fancy I don't know a bailiff, because he's
dressed like a swell?"

"But, my good woman!" said Tom, laughing.

"You put your crocodile foot in here, and I'll hit the hot water over
the both of you!" and she caught up the pan of soapsuds.

"My dear soul! I am a doctor belonging to the hospital which your
husband goes to; and have known him since he was a boy, down in
Berkshire."

"You?" and she lo