It was on an occasion when I had had to turn to with a view to victuals, that I found myself walking along the Waterloo Road, one evening after dark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger in the gas-fitting way of life.  He is very good company, having worked at the theatres, and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn himself, and wishes to be brought out in the character of Othello; but whether on account of his regular work always blacking his face and hands more or less, I cannot say.

“Tom,” he says, “what a mystery hangs over you!”

“Yes, Mr. Click”—­the rest of the house generally give him his name, as being first, front, carpeted all over, his own furniture, and if not mahogany, an out-and-out imitation—­“yes, Mr. Click, a mystery does hang over me.”

“Makes you low, you see, don’t it?” says he, eyeing me sideways.

“Why, yes, Mr. Click, there are circumstances connected with it that have,” I yielded to a sigh, “a lowering effect.”

“Gives you a touch of the misanthrope too, don’t it?” says he.  “Well, I’ll tell you what.  If I was you, I’d shake it of.”

“If I was you, I would, Mr. Click; but, if you was me, you wouldn’t.”

“Ah!” says he, “there’s something in that.”

When we had walked a little further, he took it up again by touching me on the chest.

“You see, Tom, it seems to me as if, in the words of the poet who wrote the domestic drama of The Stranger, you had a silent sorrow there.”

“I have, Mr. Click.”

“I hope, Tom,” lowering his voice in a friendly way, “it isn’t coining, or smashing?”

“No, Mr. Click.  Don’t be uneasy.”

“Nor yet forg—­” Mr. Click checked himself, and added, “counterfeiting anything, for instance?”

“No, Mr. Click.  I am lawfully in the Art line—­Fine-Art line—­but I can say no more.”

“Ah!  Under a species of star?  A kind of malignant spell?  A sort of a gloomy destiny?  A cankerworm pegging away at your vitals in secret, as well as I make it out?” said Mr. Click, eyeing me with some admiration.

I told Mr. Click that was about it, if we came to particulars; and I thought he appeared rather proud of me.

Our conversation had brought us to a crowd of people, the greater part struggling for a front place from which to see something on the pavement, which proved to be various designs executed in coloured chalks on the pavement stones, lighted by two candles stuck in mud sconces.  The subjects consisted of a fine fresh salmon’s head and shoulders, supposed to have been recently sent home from the fishmonger’s; a moonlight night at sea (in a circle); dead game; scroll-work; the head of a hoary hermit engaged in devout contemplation; the head of a pointer smoking a pipe; and a cherubim, his flesh creased as in infancy, going on a horizontal errand against the wind.  All these subjects appeared to me to be exquisitely done.