love."

In the night, about half-past eleven, I heard, as I thought, footsteps in
the passage, and creeping to the door and opening it I saw the figure of
my friend in dressing-gown and slippers, vanishing down the stairs. My
idea was that, his brain weakened by trouble, he had developed
sleep-walking tendencies. Partly out of curiosity, partly to watch over
him, I slipped on a pair of trousers and followed him.

He placed his candle on the kitchen table and made a bee-line for the
pantry door, from where he subsequently emerged with two pounds of cold
beef on a plate and about a quart of beer in a jug; and I came away,
leaving him fumbling for pickles.

I assisted at his wedding, where it seemed to me he endeavoured to
display more ecstasy than it was possible for any human being to feel;
and fifteen months later, happening to catch sight of an advertisement in
the births column of _The Times_, I called on my way home from the City
to congratulate him. He was pacing up and down the passage with his hat
on, pausing at intervals to partake of an uninviting-looking meal,
consisting of a cold mutton chop and a glass of lemonade, spread out upon
a chair. Seeing that the cook and the housemaid were wandering about the
house evidently bored for want of something to do, and that the dining-
room, where he would have been much more out of the way, was empty and
quite in order, I failed at first to understand the reason for his
deliberate choice of discomfort. I, however, kept my reflections to
myself, and inquired after the mother and child.

"Couldn't be better," he replied with a groan. "The doctor said he'd
never had a more satisfactory case in all his experience."

"Oh, I'm glad to hear that," I answered; "I was afraid you'd been
worrying yourself."

"Worried!" he exclaimed. "My dear boy, I don't know whether I'm standing
on my head or my heels" (he gave one that idea). "This is the first
morsel of food that's passed my lips for twenty-four hours."

At this moment the nurse appeared at the top of the stairs. He flew
towards her, upsetting the lemonade in his excitement.

"What is it?" he asked hoarsely. "Is it all right?"

The old lady glanced from him to his cold chop, and smiled approvingly.

"They're doing splendidly," she answered, patting him on the shoulder in
a motherly fashion. "Don't you worry."

"I can't help it, Mrs. Jobson," he replied, sitting down upon the bottom
stair, and leaning his