That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down todinner without relish.

It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by thefire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring churchrang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed.

On this night however,as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business room.

There heopened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr.Jekyll's Will and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents.

The will was holograph, for Mr.Utterson though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistancein the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L.,L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactorEdward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any periodexceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll'sshoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a fewsmall sums to the members of the doctor's household.

This document had long been the lawyer'seyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, towhom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that hadswelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge.

It was already bad enoughwhen the name was but a name of which he could learn no more.

It was worse when it began to beclothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so longbaffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend."I thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, "and now Ibegin to fear it is disgrace."With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the direction of CavendishSquare, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and receivedhis crowding patients. "If anyone knows, it will be Lanyon," he had thought.The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushereddirect from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was ahearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and aboisterous and decided manner.

At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair andwelcomed him with both hands.

The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatricalto the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling.

For these two were old friends, old mates both atschool and college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other, and what does notalways follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.