The door opened wide, and a warm shake of the hand from the dark
advancing form, told me that he had not needed to search so long through
the chambers of his memory as I, but had recognised me at once.

"Follow me!" were his only words, and then we mounted silently, he in
front and I behind, up the dark stairs, one, two, three floors and one
considerably narrower flight above. There he took my hand to guide me--a
very necessary proceeding, for, as far as I could make out, the way led
across a dark loft, hung with clothes-lines. He told me, too, to bend my
head.

As I mounted I drew my own conclusions. His hand--I remembered that in
old days he used to be rather proud of it--was damp, perhaps with mental
agitation, and he sometimes stopped as if to take breath. The narrow
garret-stairs whispered to me too, that my friend David, who in his
time had given promise of good abilities, could not have made great use
of them for his own worldly advancement.

He opened a door and bade me go in first.

Upon a table stood a lamp, whose shade concentrated the light round its
foot, in a circle of scarcely more than half a yard's radius, upon an
inkstand and papers which lay there, leaving the ends of the table in
apparent darkness. Behind the table was what looked like a black grave,
which, however, when the eye became accustomed to the abrupt transition
from light to shadow, revealed itself as a sofa, before which stood an
almost correspondingly long, painted, wooden table with square ends.

When two old friends meet in such a way, there is often, under their
frank manner, a secret shyness to overcome; for there is a layer of the