THE FELLOW-PASSENGER 289 



up courage to rid my conscience of what, I 

 confess, has gradually become an intolerable 

 burden. 



At times, in peculiarly optimistic moods, I 

 have tried to believe that perhaps my fellow- 

 passenger was not killed after all; that by some 

 miraculous intervention of Providence he was 

 privileged to escape the consequences of his rash 

 act. I am confirmed in this belief by the fact 

 that no account of the tragedy has yet been 

 published in the press, nor, as far as I can dis- 

 cover, has the body ever been found. I need 

 hardly say that I caused the most careful and 

 exhaustive inquiries to be made with a view to 

 ascertaining whether my fellow-traveller had 

 ever been seen alive since the day of the accident, 

 and the information I have hitherto elicited has 

 been of a distinctly consolatory character. A 

 being very like him was certainly observed by 

 one of the waiters in a refreshment tent at 

 Lord's Cricket Ground at the end of last summer; 

 and, again, a coachman of my acquaintance 

 assured me that he had noticed something very 

 similar, gazing with a rapt expression into an 

 ashpit in Portman Mews East, only a month 

 ago. I myself on more than one occasion have 

 fancied that I saw him: once at Olympia during 

 the Horse Show, and afterwards in the garden 

 of my own house in Surrey. I confess, however, 



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