the mere act of looking out of window, and wondering what he
should do next, more than he had patience to endure.

He turned to his study table. If he had possessed a wife to look after
him, he would have been reminded that he and his study table had nothing
in common, under present circumstances. Being deprived of conjugal
superintendence, he broke though his own rules. His restless hand
unlocked a drawer, and took out a manuscript work on medicine of his own
writing. "Surely," he thought, "I may finish a chapter, before I go to
sea to-morrow?"

His head, steady enough while he was only looking out of window, began
to swim before he had got to the bottom of a page. The last sentences of
the unfinished chapter alluded to a matter of fact which he had not yet
verified. In emergencies of any sort, he was a patient man and a man of
resource. The necessary verification could be accomplished by a visit to
the College of Surgeons, situated in the great square called Lincoln's
Inn Fields. Here was a motive for a walk--with an occupation at the end
of it, which only involved a question to a Curator, and an examination
of a Specimen. He locked up his manuscript, and set forth for Lincoln's
Inn Fields.

CHAPTER II.

When two friends happen to meet in the street, do they ever look back
along the procession of small circumstances which has led them both,
from the starting-point of their own houses, to the same spot, at the
same time? Not one man in ten thousand has probably ever thought of
making such a fantastic inquiry as this. And consequently not one man in
ten thousand, living in the midst of reality, has discovered that he is
also living in the midst of romance.

From the moment when the young surgeon closed the door of his house,
he was walking blindfold on his way to a patient in the future who was
personally still a stranger to him. He never reached the College of
Surgeons. He never embarked on his friend's yacht.

What were the obstacles which turned him aside from the course that he
had in view? Nothing but a series of trivial circumstances, occurring in
the experience of a man who goes out for a walk.

He had only reached the next street, when the first of the circumstances
presented itself in the shape of a friend's carriage, which drew up at
his side. A bright benevolent face encircled by bushy white whiskers,
looked out of the window, and a hearty voice asked him if he had
completed his arrangements for