'With pleasure.'

The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.

'Lorn!' said the Doctor, calling after him.

He returned.

'Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home. Don't
hurry. Excuse my calling you back.'

'It is not,' said the Assistant, with his former smile, 'the first
time you have called me back, dear Doctor.' With those words he
went away.

'Mr. Goodchild,' said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his
former troubled expression of face, 'I have seen that your
attention has been concentrated on my friend.'

'He fascinates me. I must apologise to you, but he has quite
bewildered and mastered me.'

'I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,' said the
Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild's,
'become in the course of time very heavy. I will tell you
something. You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious
names. I know I may trust you. I am the more inclined to
confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by
the current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early