in one sense for not being a gentleman in another. We walked together to our destination, and exchanged a few common-place sentences by the way. My companion seemed preoccupied and abstracted. He was very cautious in attempting a crossing, but so unhappy in his choice of times and seasons, that more than once he was nearly run over. In a few minutes we were each of us in our place. Our piles of books, reserved for us from the previous day, were brought us from their nightly resting-place, and we began our work as usual.
But not quite as usual. The ice had been broken. I was determined, if I could, to learn more of the character who had so strongly affected me, and, if possible, help him in his apparently cheerless old age. When evening fell again, he evidently tried to avoid me. He succeeded in leaving the building some minutes before me, and as I came to the top of the street which had been the scene of our previous meeting, I just caught a glimpse of the well-known figure as it dived into the squalid street whence I had seen it emerge. Intent on learning something of the life and pursuits of my companion, I strove hard to win a few words of conversation with him on every day of my visits to Bloomsbury. Sometimes I succeeded, but was more often baffled. He was always polite, but always incommunicative ; and from his dreamy gaze and occasional mutterings, I concluded that he was too preoccupied with his work, whatever it might be, to admit of his forming any new acquaintance. To gain access to his lodgings, as much, I hope, with the desire of finding means to help him, as from mere curiosity, I tried several ingenious expedients, and descended to more than one, I hope I may say, pardonable, pretence. I proposed to bring him a book on a subject about which we conversed. I begged to be allowed a sight of a MS., the possession of which he indiscreetly owned. On one occasion I went so far as to feel suddenly faint and indisposed as we approached the turning where he usually bade me farewell. An inopportune Hansom was rolling by unoccupied, and with unusual vigour and decision, the old man called it to my side.
The more convinced I became that all my endeavours would give me little more knowledge of my mysterious acquaintance than the infinitesimal modicums which I possessed when I first observed his outer appearance, the more strangely did he occupy my thoughts. Once I dreamed of him by night. I often dreamed of him by day. Who was he? Whence did he come? What was he doing? Had he no friends—no children to nurse his age as he had nursed their youth? The utmost that I could discover was his name. One day I followed him as he left the library, and stooped, in more senses than one, to pick up the torn fragments of a cancelled voucher for books returned to the librarian which he dropped upon the ground. The voucher was signed “James Smith.” Not a name for a romance. Not a name like that which Mr. Richard Swiveller chose for the Marchioness whom he destined for his bride, as being “indicative of mystery.” “James Smith” indicated just nothing at all. This name I discovered, and also the fact that its owner came out of and returned into the fourth of the dingy houses of the alley whence I had first seen him emerge. With this I was compelled to be content. I noticed moreover that the old man had nearly reached the end of his MS. book, and that, on the leaves of the book, was a label bearing the number xxxvi. The nearer the writer came to the end of his work, the more excited grew his demeanor. His hands shook with a quicker palsy with every page that he turned. His eyes shone with a fiercer fire as he lighted on some apposite quotation.
On the Tuesday of the fourth week of my visits to the site of Montague House, it chanced that I was accompanied on my way by a young surgeon of my acquaintance. He had won already very favourable notice from the chiefs of his profession, and having a happy power of conversing on dry subjects, combined with rare delicacy of manipulation in difficult cases, he was an agreeable companion, as well as a skilful operator. He was beguiling the way with felicitous remarks on the origin of species and the relation of the Simian to the Human families, and for the while I had completely forgotten D. 8, his book and beard, and all belonging to him. Ere long the well-known figure drove Mr. Darwin and the gorillas from my head. I saw him slowly wending his way some two hundred yards in front of us, and I began to describe him and his habits to my friend. Five minutes more and the weak, stooping form was looking eagerly up and down Oxford Street to see if he might venture through the stream of traffic. He waited with his head turned anxiously eastward, till a huge van of Pickford’s, driving rapidly from the west, was within two yards of the place where he stood, and then plunged forward. We were nearly by his side. I shut my eyes for a second in blank horror. Was he crushed and bleeding on the road? The huge waggon was far on its way. Some part of the harness of the vehicle had struck the old man as he met it, and thrown him back upon the pavement. I thrust my way through the crowd that in London rises in an instant, like the men of Pyrrha and Deucalion, from the stones. A pitiful, senseless, huddled heap, lay the poor old man. By his side was the precious MS. that he loved so well, soiled with the filth of the street. I hastily snatched it up, proclaimed that I knew the residence of the fallen man—that my companion was a surgeon—that I would take him home immediately in a cab. A policeman, who, strange to say, was on the spot, mounted the box, and we were suffered to proceed.
In two minutes it was all over. Even then I had a strange feeling that in carrying him home I was unwarrantably intruding on his privacy. He! But was he still alive? Not dead, as yet, said my friend. How he was injured it was impossible to guess without examination. There was no external mark of injury. He was stunned and senseless, and lay all nerveless and death-like in our arms.
It did not occupy a long time for us to