handkerchief, and then set to work steadily to write his name
and address upon each of the seven papers. I sat opposite to him and
read _Punch_. I always take the old humour when travelling; I find it
soothing to the nerves.

Passing over the points at Manningtree the train gave a lurch, and a
horse-shoe he had carefully placed in the rack above him slipped through
the netting, falling with a musical ring upon his head.

He appeared neither surprised nor angry. Having staunched the wound with
his handkerchief, he stooped and picked the horse-shoe up, glanced at it
with, as I thought, an expression of reproach, and dropped it gently out
of the window.

"Did it hurt you?" I asked.

It was a foolish question. I told myself so the moment I had uttered it.
The thing must have weighed three pounds at the least; it was an
exceptionally large and heavy shoe. The bump on his head was swelling
visibly before my eyes. Anyone but an idiot must have seen that he was
hurt. I expected an irritable reply. I should have given one myself had
I been in his place. Instead, however, he seemed to regard the inquiry
as a natural and kindly expression of sympathy.

"It did, a little," he replied.

"What were you doing with it?" I asked. It was an odd sort of thing for
a man to be travelling with.

"It was lying in the roadway just outside the station," he explained; "I
picked it up for luck."

He refolded his handkerchief so as to bring a cooler surface in contact
with the swelling, while I murmured something genial about the
inscrutability of Providence.

"Yes," he said, "I've had a deal of luck in my time, but it's never
turned out well."

"I was born on a Wednesday," he continued, "which, as I daresay you know,
is the luckiest day a man can be born on. My mother was a widow, and
none of my relatives would do anything for me. They said it would be
like taking coals to Newcastle, helping a boy born on a Wednesday; and my
uncle, when he died, left every penny of his money to my brother Sam, as
a slight compensation to him for having been born on a Friday. All I
ever got was advice upon the duties and responsibilities of wealth, when
it arrived, and entreaties that I would not neglect those with claims
upon me when I came to be a rich man."

He paused while folding up his various insurance papers and placing them
in the inside breast-pocket of his coat.

"Then there are black cats," he went on; "they're said to be lu