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 XXI

THE TALISMAN WHICH TRANSCENDS EXPERIENCE

Calling the name of the solicitor, Northcote broke away abruptly from the prisoner and left the room. It had seemed to be charged with a pestilence. Mr. Whitcomb was soon at his side, and hastily they wended their way up and down various flights of stone steps, along the noisome corridors of the huge building, until daylight came in sight once more through the doorway at the end of the passage at which their cab was standing. Their relief was very real at being able to breathe again the living air, fog-laden as it was.

"I don't know how many times," said Mr. Whitcomb, as they drove from the portals of the jail, "on one errand and another, I have descended into this inferno, but it never loses its power to give me the blues."

"I am regretting," said Northcote, "that I did not take your advice. I wish I had not come near it. I cannot shake off the impression it has made. Ugh! it gets into one's blood. I don't know anything quite so overpowering as the nausea of locality."

"You are too impressionable, my son," said the solicitor, with a furtive smile. "You will never be able to get through life at this rate. It wants one of some hardihood, one who is robust in each one of his five senses, to practise law."