Wearily I trudged back to my rooms to wait there until it was time to dress, for I had a dinner engagement at the Reform Club.  On the table in the little hall lay a telegram, which I opened listlessly.  It was from a well-known firm of solicitors in Dunchester, and ran:—­

“Our client, Mrs. Strong, died suddenly at three o’clock.  Important that we should see you.  Will you be in Dunchester to-morrow?  If not, please say where and at what hour we can wait upon you in town.”

“Wait upon you in town,” I said to myself as I laid down the telegram.  A great firm of solicitors would not wish to wait upon me unless they had something to tell me to my advantage and their own.  Mrs. Strong must have left me some money.  Possibly even I was her heir.  More than once before in life my luck had turned in this sudden way, why should it not happen again?  But she was insane and could not appoint an heir!  Why had not those fools of lawyers told me the facts instead of leaving me to the torment of this suspense?

I glanced at the clock, then taking a telegraph form I wrote:  “Shall be at Dunchester Station 8:30.  Meet me there or later at the club.”  Taking a cab I drove to St. Pancras, just in time to catch the train.  In my pocket—­so closely was I pressed for money, for my account at the bank was actually overdrawn—­I had barely enough to pay for a third-class ticket to Dunchester.  This mattered little, however, for I always travelled third-class, not because I liked it but because it looked democratic and the right sort of thing for a Radical M.P. to do.

The train was a fast one, but that journey seemed absolutely endless.  Now at length we had slowed down at the Dunchester signal-box, and now we were running into the town.  If my friend the lawyer had anything really striking to tell me he would send to meet me at the station, and, if it was something remarkable, he would probably attend there himself.  Therefore, if I saw neither the managing clerk nor the junior partner, nor the Head of the Firm, I might be certain that the news was trivial, probably—­dreadful thought which had not occurred to me before—­that I was appointed executor under the will with a legacy of a hundred guineas.

The train rolled into the station.  As it began to glide past the pavement of wet asphalt I closed my eyes to postpone the bitterness of disappointment, if only for a few seconds.  Perforce I opened them again as the train was stopping, and there, the very first thing they fell upon, looking portly and imposing in a fur coat, was the rubicund-faced Head of the Firm himself.  “It is good,” I thought, and supported myself for a moment by the hat-rack, for the revulsion of feeling produced a sudden faintness.  He saw me, and sprang forward with a beaming yet respectful countenance.  “It is very good,” I thought.

“My dear sir,” he began obsequiously, “I do trust that my telegram has not incommoded you, but my news was such that I felt it necessary to meet you at the earliest possible moment, and therefore wired to you at every probable address.”