Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/139

 complacent performers of tricks which they mistook for the operations of their specific talent, subscribers to conventions that were shallow and nonsensical and in open enmity to the idea of justice for which they stood as the self-satisfied expression.

As he raced along in the company of these wonderful thoughts through the south of London, he recognized in himself all the signs that declare Truth's authentic champion. It would be his to deliver more than one rueful blow upon the close-*locked portals of pedantry. "The purblind old man who dares to occupy the seat of judgment, his authority shall be traversed, it shall be rent in pieces. As for that amazing creature who will dare to stand up for the Crown, who will propose to do to death a human being with that bleak and irascible voice, and the operations of that arrested growth he calls his intellect, an awful example will have to be made of him."

There was no end to the succession of deserted streets. Water swam in shallow pools along the black pavements which seemed to reflect the color of the sky. The numerous lamps, picked out as so many dull, yellow balls in the surrounding blackness, suffused their oppressive rays along the long, flat surfaces so that they appeared to shine without giving forth a radiance.

How vague and vast seemed these early hours before the dawn! They did not contain a living soul. The sky, the streets, the dark houses, the bare trees in the gardens and at the sides of the roads were soundless, empty, destitute of life. A quietness so profound appeared uncanny on the