‘One night she had gone to bed, and I was thinking of going. I had been studying in the back room, where I went for refuge from her in the present position of affairs — (I read a good number of surgical books about this time, and also Vanity Fair) — when I heard a loud, long-continued knocking at the door, enough to waken the whole street. Before I could get it open, I heard that well-known bass of Jack Marshland’s — once heard, never to be forgotten — pipe up the negro song —

‘“Who’s dat knocking at de door?”

‘Though it was raining hard at the time, and I stood waiting to let him in, he would finish his melody in the open air; loud and clear along the street it sounded. I saw Miss Tomkinson’s night-capped head emerge from a window. She called out “Police! police!”

‘Now there were no police, only a rheumatic constable, in the town; but it was the custom of the ladies, when alarmed at night, to call an imaginary police, which had, they thought, an intimidating effect; but, as everyone knew the real state of the unwatched town, we did not much mind it in gene............