Responsive to Mr Cupples's last words uttered from the brink of the pit into which his spirit was sinking, and probably forgotten straightway, Alec knocked at his door upon the Sunday evening, and entered.

The strange creature was sitting in the same position as before, looking as if he had not risen since he spoke those words.

But there was an alteration in the place, a certain Sunday look about the room, which Alec could not account for.

The same caricatures jested from the walls; the same tumbler of toddy was steaming on the table amidst the same litter of books and papers covered with the same dust and marked with the same circles from the bottoms of wet tumblers and glasses.

The same cutty-clay, of enviable blackness, reposed between the teeth of Mr Cupples.
After he had been seated for a few moments, however, Alec all at once discovered the source of the reformation-look of the place: Mr Cupples had on a shirt-collar--clean and of imposing proportions.