saved my little penny, and I'm got too old to change
my ways. I've begun on a growler, and I'll end on one. If you'll
believe me, sir, I've been on the streets for seven-and-forty year."

"That's a long time," I said.

"Well, it's long for our trade," he replied. "You see, there
ain't no other in the world that takes the steam out of a man so quickly--
what with wet and cold and late hours, and maybe no hours at all. There's
few that lasts at it as long as I have."

"You must have seen a deal of the world during that time," I
remarked. "There are few men who can have greater opportunities of
seeing life."

"The world!" he grunted, flicking up the horse with his whip. "I've
seen enough of it to be well-nigh sick of it. As to life, if you'd
said death, you'd ha' been nearer the mark."

"Death!" I ejaculated.

"Yes, death," he said. "Why, bless your soul, sir, if I was to write
down all I've seen since I've been in the trade, there's not a man
in London would believe me, unless maybe some o' the other cabbies.
I tell ye I took a dead man for a fare once, and drove about with him
nigh half the night. Oh, you needn't look shocked, sir, for this
wasn't the cab--no, nor the last one I had neither."

"How did it happen?" I asked, feeling glad, in spite of his
assurance, that Matilda had not heard of the episode.

"Well, it's an old story now," said the driver, putting a small piece
of very black tobacco into the corner of his mouth. "I daresay it's
twenty odd years since it happened, but it's not the kind o' thing as
slips out of a man's memory. It was very late one night, and I was
working my hardest to pick up something good, for I'd made a poor
day's work of it. The theatres had all come out, and though I kept
up and down the Strand till nigh one o'clock, I got nothing but one
eighteenpenny job. I was thinking of giving it up and going home,
when it struck me that I might as well make a bit of a circuit, and
see if I couldn't drop across something. Pretty soon I gave a
gentleman a lift as far as the Oxford Road, and then I drove through
St. John's Wood on my way home. By that time it would be about
half-past one, and the streets were quite quiet and deserted, for the
night was cloudy and it was beginning to rain. I was putting on the
pace as well as my tired beast would go, for we both wanted to get
back to our suppers, when I heard a woman's voice hail me out of a
side street. I turned back, and the