h it seems elaborate and costly. And yet what
else can it be? It _must_ be a practical jest." And just then his eye
fell upon a feature which seemed corroborative of that view: the pagoda
of cigars which Michael had erected ere he left the chambers. "Why
that?" reflected Gideon. "It seems entirely irresponsible." And drawing
near, he gingerly demolished it. "A key," he thought. "Why that? And why
so conspicuously placed?" He made the circuit of the instrument, and
perceived the keyhole at the back. "Aha! this is what the key is for,"
said he. "They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger." And
with that he turned the key and raised the lid.

In what antics of agony, in what fits of flighty resolution, in what
collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous
to inquire too closely.

That trill of tiny song with which the eaves-birds of London welcome the
approach of day found him limp and rumpled and bloodshot, and with a
mind still vacant of resource. He rose and looked forth unrejoicingly on
blinded windows, an empty street, and the grey daylight dotted with the
yellow lamps. There are mornings when the city seems to awake with a
sick headache; this was one of them; and still the twittering reveille
of the sparrows stirred in Gideon's spirit.

"Day here," he thought, "and I still helpless! This must come to an
end." And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket; and set
forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth
time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, and regrets. To call in
the police, to give up the body, to cover London with handbills
describing John Dickson and Ezra Thomas, to fill the papers with
paragraphs, _Mysterious Occurrence in the Temple--Mr. Forsyth admitted
to bail_, this was one course, an easy course, a safe course; but not,
the more he reflected on it, not a pleasant one. For, was it not to
publish abroad a number of singular facts about himself? A child ought
to have seen through the story of these adventurers, and he had gaped
and swallowed it. A barrister of the least self-respect should have
refused to listen to clients who came before him in a manner so
irregular, and he had listened. And O, if he had only listened; but he
had gone upon their errand--he, a barrister, uninstructed even by the
shadow of a solicitor--upon an errand fit only for a private detective;
and alas!--and for the hundredth time the blood surged to