or I have always found that
conversation with them leads to my own undoing.

Witness the following. One winter night my eldest son, who lives about
a mile away, went out to post a letter at midnight. After dropping his
letter in the pillar-box, he was surprised to hear a voice say, "Will
you kindly show me the way to Bridlington?" "Bridlington! why, it is
more than two hundred miles away." The request made my son gasp, for, as
I have said, it was winter and midnight.

The audacity of the request, however, arrested his attention, and that
doubtless was the end to be secured. So a conversation followed. The
inquirer was a Scotchman about thirty years of age; he wore dark glasses
and was decently clad; he had been discharged from St. Bartholomew's
Hospital. He was a seaman, but owing to a boiler explosion on board he
had been treated in the hospital. Now he must walk to Bridlington, where
an uncle lived who would give him a home. He produced a letter from his
uncle, but he had either lost or torn up the envelope. All this and more
he told my son with such candour and sincerity, that he was soon the
poorer by half-a-crown. Then, to improve the fellow's chance of getting
to Bridlington, he brought him to me. I was enjoying my beauty sleep
when that ill-fated knock aroused me. Donning a warm dressing-gown and
slippers, I went down to the front door, and very soon the three of us
were shivering round the remains of a fire in my dining-room.

Very lucidly and modestly Angus repeated the above story, not once did
he falter or trip. He showed me the letter from his uncle, he pointed
out the condition of his eyes and the scars on his face; with some demur
he accepted my half-crown, saying that he did not ask for anything, and
that all he wanted was to get to Bridlington.

In my pyjamas and dressing-gown I explored the larder and provided him
with food, after which my son escorted him to the last tramcar, saw him
safely on his way to the Seamen's Institute with a note to the manager
guaranteeing the expense of his bed and board for a few days.

Next day my son visited the Seamen's Institute, but alas! Angus was not
there, he had not been there. Nevertheless the manager knew something of
him, for three separate gentlemen had sent Angus to the institute. One
had found him in the wilds of Finchley looking for Bridlington! Another
had found him pursuing the same quest at Highgate, while still another
had come on him, with his dark