CHAPTER XXIV.
SHADOWLAND "Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets." That saying of Mr.Stone's, which--like so many of his sayings--had travelled forth to beat the air, might have seemed, even "in those days," not altogether without meaning to anyone who looked into the room of Mr.Joshua Creed in Hound Street.
This aged butler lay in bed waiting for the inevitable striking of a small alarum clock placed in the very centre of his mantelpiece.
Flanking that round and ruthless arbiter, which drove him day by day to stand up on feet whose time had come to rest, were the effigies of his past triumphs.

On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame, slightly tinged with smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable Bateson," in the uniform of his Yeomanry.

Creed's former master's face wore that dare-devil look with which he had been wont to say: "D---n it, Creed! lend me a pound.
I've got no money!" On the other hand, in a green frame which had once been plush, and covered by a glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a portrait of the Dowager Countess of Glengower, as this former mistress of his appeared, conceived by the local photographer, laying the foundation-stone of the local almshouse.

During the wreck of Creed's career, which, following on a lengthy illness, had preceded his salvation by the Westminster Gazette, these two household gods had lain at the bottom of an old tin trunk, in the possession of the keeper of a lodging-house, waiting to be bailed out.

The "Honorable Bateson" was now dead, nor had he paid as yet the pounds he had borrowed.