and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend!'

Round the corner from the by street there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate, and let in flats and chambers to all sorts of conditions of men: map- engravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan-light, Mr Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.

`Is Dr Jekyll at home, Poole?' asked the lawyer.

`I will see, Mr Utterson,' said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, paved with flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. `Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining- room?'

`Here, thank you,' said the lawyer; and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor's; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But to-night there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare in him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr Jekyll was gone out.

`I saw Mr Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, Poole,' he said. `Is that right, when Dr Jekyll is from home?'

`Quite right, Mr Utterson, sir,' replied the servant. `Mr Hyde has a key.'

`Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole,' resumed the other, musingly.

`Yes, sir, he do indeed,' said Poole. `We have all orders to obey him.'

`I do not think I ever met Mr Hyde?' asked Utterson.

`O dear no, sir. He never dines here,' replied the butler. `Indeed, we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory.'

`Well, good-night, Poole.'

`Good-night, Mr Utterson.'

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. `Poor Harry Jekyll,' he thought, `my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild when he was young; along while ago, to be sure; but in the law of God there is no statute of limitations. Ah' it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace; punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault.' And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so near to doing, yet avoided. And then by a return of his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. `This Master Hyde, if he were studied,' thought he, `must have secrets of his own: black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll's worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me quite cold to think of