Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/142

 *tended rudely with the first weapons that came to their hands to enforce their claims, how could he, whose coat was in holes, whose pockets were empty, have penetrated to the Mecca of their gods?

Limping into the Strand as the clock at the Law Courts chimed the hour of eight, his imagination was assailed, not with their unmeaning mass of architecture, but with that unseen and grisly bulk which only the eye of his inner consciousness could apprehend. A shudder convulsed his veins. Less than thirty short hours hence the gladiator would be called into the arena. He would have to face the lions with no defence for his nakedness except a small shield in the use of which he had had no practice, and a sharp but untried spear.

Climbing up the steep stairs to his garret, his nostrils were affronted as they had been on so many other occasions by the foulness of the heavy and noisome air. What a labor it was to reach the locked door at the top of the highest, the darkest, the most unpleasant story! His fibres had grown strangely slack, his breathing was no longer joyous and free. The mighty engines of his mind had ceased suddenly to vibrate; those pulses which had been so overweening in their insolence could only flutter now. He had fallen without a warning from his eminence. His whole being was enveloped in a despicable flaccidity, a despicable weakness, as he turned the key in the lock and entered his garret.

He recoiled from the dismal scene that met his eyes with the shudder that one gives in plunging into icy water. As he stood on the threshold all the phantoms of his previous despair sprang upon