name remained in
Stephenson's mind as indicating the right man, and not some other man's
name? That looked good. Yes, that looked very good. In fact it went on
looking better and better, straight along--until by-and-by it grew into
positive _proof_. And then Richards put the matter at once out of his
mind, for he had a private instinct that a proof once established is
better left so.

He was feeling reasonably comfortable now, but there was still one other
detail that kept pushing itself on his notice: of course he had done that
service--that was settled; but what _was_ that service? He must recall
it--he would not go to sleep till he had recalled it; it would make his
peace of mind perfect. And so he thought and thought. He thought of a
dozen things--possible services, even probable services--but none of them
seemed adequate, none of them seemed large enough, none of them seemed
worth the money--worth the fortune Goodson had wished he could leave in
his will. And besides, he couldn't remember having done them, anyway.
Now, then--now, then--what _kind_ of a service would it be that would
make a man so inordinately grateful? Ah--the saving of his soul! That
must be it. Yes, he could remember, now, how he once set himself the
task of converting Goodson, and laboured at it as much as--he was going
to say three months; but upon closer examination it shrunk to a month,
then to a week, then to a day, then to nothing. Yes, he remembered now,
and with unwelcome vividness, that Goodson had told him to go to thunder
and mind his own business--_he_ wasn't hankering to follow Hadleyburg to
heaven!

So that solution was a failure--he hadn't saved Goodson's soul. Richards
was discouraged. Then after a little came another idea: had he saved
Goodson's property? No, that wouldn't do--he hadn't any. His life? That
is it! Of course. Why, he might have thought of it before. This time
he was on the right track, sure. His imagination-mill was hard at work
in a minute, now.

Thereafter, during a stretch of two exhausting hours, he was busy saving
Goodson's life. He saved it in all kinds of difficult and perilous ways.
In every case he got it saved satisfactorily up to a certain point; then,
just as he was beginning to get well persuaded that it had really
happened, a troublesome detail would turn up which made the whole thing
impossible. As in the matter of drowning, for instance. In that case he
had swum out and tu