on of 'Free-will,'
and being myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never
could in the very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point.
Moreover, when I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way
of retaliating, and would foist upon me his favourite authors. He was
never a worshipper of any one writer, but always had at least a dozen
prophets in whose praise he was enthusiastic.

Well, on this Christmas Eve, we had been to see dear old Ravenscroft and
his grand-daughter, and we were walking back through the quiet precincts
of the Temple, when he said abruptly:

"I have decided to go back to Bath to-morrow."

"Have you had a worse account?" I asked, much startled at this sudden
announcement.

"No," he replied, "but the one I had a week ago was far from good if you
remember, and I have a feeling that I ought to be there."

At that moment we emerged into the confusion of Fleet Street; but when
we had crossed the road I began to remonstrate with him, and argued the
folly of the idea all the way down Chancery Lane.

However, there was no shaking his purpose; Christmas and its
associations had made his life in town no longer possible for him.

"I must at any rate try it again and see how it works," he said.

And all I could do was to persuade him to leave the bulk of his
possessions in London, "in case," as he remarked, "the Major would not
have him."

So the next day I was left to myself again with nothing to remind me
of Derrick's stay but his pictures which still hung on the wall of our
sitting-room. I made him promise to write a full, true, and particular
account of his return, a bona-fide old-fashioned letter, not the
half-dozen lines of these degenerate days; and about a week later I
received the following budget:

"Dear Sydney,--I got down to Bath all right, and, thanks to your 'Study
of Sociology,' endured a slow, and cold, and dull, and depressing
journey with the thermometer down to zero, and spirits to correspond,
with the country a monotonous white, and the sky a monotonous grey,
and a companion who smoked the vilest tobacco you can conceive. The old
place looks as beautiful as ever, and to my great satisfaction the hills
round about are green. Snow, save in pictures, is an abomination.
Milsom Street looked asleep, and Gay Street decidedly dreary, but the
inhabitants were roused by my knock, and the old landlady nearly shook
my hand off. My father has an attack o