One winter night my eldest son, who lives about a mile away, went out to post a letter at midnight.

After dropping his letter in the pillar-box, he was surprised to hear a voice say, "Will you kindly show me the way to Bridlington ?" "Bridlington! why, it is more than two hundred miles away." The request made my son gasp, for, as I have said, it was winter and midnight.
The audacity of the request, however, arrested his attention, and that doubtless was the end to be secured.

So a conversation followed.

The inquirer was a Scotchman about thirty years of age; he wore dark glasses and was decently clad; he had been discharged from St.Bartholomew's Hospital.

He was a seaman, but owing to a boiler explosion on board he had been treated in the hospital.