in shabby imitation of a
West End swell; an ill-fitting frock-coat, which, even in the uncertain
flicker of the gas-lamps, pronounces itself to be ready made, and the
typical shopwalker's silk hat worn slightly on one side. Whether this
night bird goes through life on tiptoe, as many people do, or whether
he only adopts that fashion on this particular occasion, is a conundrum,
not without interest to students of character to whom a man's walk
denotes much.

For a long time the street is deserted, and then a bedraggled figure in
a shawl, with a big paper parcel under her arm, shuffles noiselessly by
and disappears down an adjacent turning. Then there is another long
interval, interrupted by a pretentious clock sonorously sounding two. A
feeling of drowsiness creeps over me; my eyelids droop. I begin to lose
cognisance of my surroundings and to imagine myself in some far-away
place, when I am recalled sharply to myself by an intensely cold current
of air. Intuitively I recognise the superphysical; it is the same
species of cold which invariably heralds its approach. I have been right
in my surmises after all; this spot is destined to be haunted. My eyes
are wide enough open now, and every nerve in my body tingles with the
keenest expectation. Something is coming, and, if that something is not
the phantasm of him whom I believe is earthbound, whose phantasm is it?
There is a slight noise of scratching from somewhere close beside me. It
might have been the wind rustling the leaves against the masonry, or it
might have been--I look round and see nothing. The sound is repeated and
with the same result--NOTHING! A third time I heard it, and then from
the dark road on one side of me there waddles--I recognise the waddling
at once--a shadow that, gradually becoming a little more distinct,
develops into the rather blurry form of a dog--a gaunt, hungry-looking
mongrel. In a few seconds it stops short and looks at me with big
swollen eyes that glitter with a something that is not actually bestial
or savage, something strange yet not altogether strange, something
enigmatic yet not entirely enigmatic. I am nonplussed; it was, and yet
it was not, what I expected. With restless, ambling steps it slinks past
me, disappearing through the closed gate by my side. Then satisfied, yet
vaguely puzzled, I come away, wondering, wondering--wondering why on
earth dogs should thus be desecrated.

Contrary to what one would imagine to be the case