es; or, the B

were of sensitive and excitable stocks, and they revealed by the jumpings and bumpings of the black head and the yellow that nothing could be done in the way of

s rather a mad doctor- he walks the world curing frenzies and not distributing them. That is the answer to the two unanswerable questions which I put to the prosecutors. That is why they dared not produce a line by any one who had actually confronted the pistol. All who had actually confronted the pistol confessed that they had profited by it. That was why Smith, though a good shot, never hit an

d dual personality," said Dr. Cyrus Pym dreamily;

pencil in the air with a gesture of e

one else can account on any other theory but ours for the Warde

say we produce none of the actual victims. Wal, here is one victim-England's celebrated and stricken Warner. I reckon he is pretty well produced.

est eye as one specially difficult to startle into any recognition of the glory of God. We admit that our client, in this one instance, failed, and that the operation was

rious for the first time in his life, "you mi

g about just before the fir

iously, "asked me, with characteristic r

shooting out a long lean finger, as rigid and arresting a

e that," assen

as because you didn't see that birth was anything to rejoice ove

stillness in the room; a

ce of the people that is

language, it is up to him

claim an

iminologist had been explaining that science took the same view of offences against property as it did of offences against life. "Most murder," he had said, "is a variation of homicidal mania, and in the same way most theft is a version of kleptomania. I cannot entertain any doubt that my learned friends opposite adequately con-ceive how t

a man of theft and send him to prison for ten years. The tolerant and humane ti

s of verbal fastidiousness, that he went on, unconscious not o

rds murderers. It regards them not as sinners to be punished for an arbitrary period, but as patients to be detained and cared for," (his first two digits closed

fingers of scentless and delicate dust. But now that things are moving a little more, there is something I should really like to know. I have hung on Dr. Pym's lips, of course, with an in

strict specialism and vurry narrow professional outlook of most criminals. One will have an irresistible physical impulsion towards pearl sleeve-links, while he passes over the most elegant and celebrated diamond sleeve-links, placed about in the most conspicuous locations. Another will impede his flight with no less than forty-seve

e butler's bed. They have thrown down the gauntlet to American science on this point. They declare that diamond links are not left about in conspicuous locations in the haunts of the lower classes, as they were i

bewilderment for five minutes past, suddenly lifted h

ed; "you mean that

l that all the eloquent extras, all the rhetoric or digression on either side, was exasperating and unintelligible to the other. Mo

course as in the previous case, we select the indubitable instance from the rest, and we take the most correct cast-iron evidence. I w

a point of excellence, and the new motor horns in a manner that put him upon the platform of great artists. But his imitation of a Canon of Durham was not convincing; indeed, the sense of the le

s was certainly the most extraordinary incident in a not uneventful and perhaps not an unimportant career. I am by no means without experience in scenes of civil tumult. I have faced many a political crisis in the old Primrose League days at Herne Bay,

o attend a meeting which he described, I must say profanely described, as calculated to promote the kingdom of God. I found, on th

all upon political or social problems, I must say that for a clergyman to countenance, even in jest, such discredited nostrums of dissipated demagogues as Socialism or Radicalism partakes of the character of the betrayal of a sacred trust. Far be it from me to say a word against the Reverend Raymond Percy, the colleague in question. He was brilliant, I suppose, and to some apparentl

erend gentleman's favourite figure of logic, may I say that while tortures woul

id Dr. Pym;

," said Inglewood; "they have

ly in his own; and Pym glanced for a moment towards the can

lowering his voice in a moody good-humou

on was ended the reading of the cler

ere Irish, and showed the weakness of that impetuous people. When gathered together into gangs and conspiracies they seem to lo

l rose to his feet, bowed s

terially help them to improve their lot. It was, I think, about this time that an extraordinary interruption occurred. An enormous, powerful man, partly concealed with white plaster, arose in the middle of the hall, and offered (in a loud, roaring voice, like a bull's) some observations which seemed to be in a foreign language. Mr. Raymond Percy, my colleague, descended to his level by entering into a duel of repartee, in which he appeared to be the victor. The meeting began to behave more respectfully for a little; yet before I had said twelve

ome along!' And turning his big back abruptly, he led us down the lean old lane with the one lean old lamp-post, we scarcely knowing what to do but to follow him. He had certainly helped us in a most difficult situation, and, as a gentleman, I could not treat such a benefactor with suspicion without grave grounds. Such also was the view of my Socialistic colleague, who (w

the street, and tha

a way that certainl

of us looked larger a

d, but he said with

good; we want a littl

always like to understand things in t

Socialist, or whatever he was, with the most terrifyi

ut of the lane, where we were already rather cramped, into a paved passage, at the end of which we passed through a wooden gate left open. We then found ourselves, in the increasing darkne

n follow as best I could. The path on which I then planted my feet was quite unprecedentedly narrow. I had never had to walk along a thoroughfare so exiguous. Along one side of it grew what, in the dark and density of air, I first took to b

t five steps, and let loose my just reprobation

ay,' declared my in

traffic once in

called out; `you are not go

eague flippantly. `I think you and I are big

tolen by the capitalist, not by sweeping civil war and revolution, but by reform fitted to the special occasion-here a lit

or a joke,' I cried, `I

the creature with horrible courtesy; `and,

he moment, I put it in my waistcoat pocket, and, picking my way back by wall and ladder, landed in the respectable streets once more. Not before, however, I had seen with my own eyes the two awful and lamentable facts-

ying that every member of the Christian Social Union must necessarily be a burglar. I have no right to bring

hat the photograph yo

doubtedly that of th

ght I looked at his car

e of Innocent Smith

lement

have invented so heavy a document; that Moses Gould (for one) could no more write like a canon th

theory which are so dear to Dr. Pym. I know how they are made. Perjury is a variety of aphasia, leading a man to say one thing instead of another. Forgery is a kind of writer's cramp, forcing a man to write his uncle

ted by our previous arrangement, and ask

his eyes to indicat

the date of Canon Hawkins's last glimpse of Sm

d smartly. "November thirt

"identified the houses in Ho

ut of the highroad," answered Gould

him, "was there any burglary in that terrace

octor primly, after a pause, "an unsuc

way, left off at the exciting moment. Why don't you produce the evidence of the other

ngers on the table, as he did when he was spe

natural to a bright thinker. This Mr. Raymond Percy is admittedly, by the canon's evidence, a minister of eccentric ways. His con-nection with England's proudest and fairest does not seemingly prevent a taste for the society of the real low-down. On the other hand, the prisoner Smith

, then, to trace

ted the specialist,

ure it's i

you bet 'e saw the burglary. Don't YOU start looking for 'im. Look for your own 'ead

Michael Moon, sitti

ercy's letter

on to admit the account given by the second clergyman fully ratifies, as far as facts are concerned, that given by the first clergyman. We concede, then, the canon's story so far as it goe

n was violent and simple; yet the thoughts that led up to it were so complicated and contradictory that I could not retrace them now. I knew Hawkins was a kind, innocent gentleman; and I

ive hundred years; men who had to gnaw fish because they could not get meat-and fish-bones when they could not get fish. As too many British officers treat the army as a review, so I had treated the Church Militant as if it were the Church Pageant. Hoxton cures that. Then I realized that for eighteen hundred years the Church Militant had not been a pageant, bu

stians have with the wrongs inflicted on other people. But there is no priestcraft about Hawkins-nor any other kind of craft. He is as perfectly incapable of being a priest as he is of being a carpenter or a cabman or a gardener or a plasterer. He is a perfect gentleman; that is his com

n I looked at the curate and at the burglar, and decided, in a spasm of inspiration, that the burglar was the better man of the two. The burglar seemed quite as kind and human as the curate was- and he was also brave and self-reliant, which the curate was not. I knew there was no virtue in the upper class, for I belong to it myself; I knew there was not so very much

my brain and body laboured. The sky and all those things that are commonly clear seemed overpowered by sinister spirits. Tall spectres with turbans of vapour seemed to stand higher than the sun or moon, eclipsing both. I thought dimly of illustrations to the `Arabian Nights' on brown paper with rich but sombre tints,

rub or a tall tree of coloured vapour. The colours of the smoke were various; for some chimneys were from firesides and some from factories, and some again from mere rubbish heaps. And yet, though the tints were all varied, they all seemed unnatural, like fumes from a witch's pot. It was as if the shameful and ugly shapes growing shapeless in the cauldron sent up each its separate spurt of steam, coloured according to the fish or flesh consumed.

ings by leaving out all the adjectives. Mrs. Duke, who had woken up, observed that she was sure it was all very nice, and the decis

like the modern city that makes it; it is not alw

in the sky. These were the rivers of our vanity pouring into the void. We had taken the sacred circle of the whirlwind, and looked down on it, and seen it as a whirlpool. And

ghts of red brown and old gold glowing through them now and again, we were on the top of one of those long, consecutive, and genteel rows of houses which are still to be found lifting their heads above poorer districts, the remains of some rage of optimism in earlier speculative builders. Probably enough, they were entirely untenanted, or tenanted only by such small clans of the poor as gather also in the o

urglar lifting his hand from the chimney he leaned on, he leaned on it a little more heavily, and the whole chimney-pot turned over like the openi

harlequinades of my childhood, and was darkly and quite irrationally comforted by a sense of unsubstantiality in the scene, as if the houses were of lath and paint and pasteboard, and were only meant to be tumbled in and out of by policemen and pantaloons. The law-breaking of my companion seemed not only seriously excusable, but even comically excusable. Who were all

ned visible. Something again far off, and yet familiar, pleased me about this way of invading the houses of men. I thought of little chimney-sweeps, and `The Water Babies;' but I decided that it was n

ed; it was dark against the more fiery part of the fog, and nothing could be spelt of its expression, but its voice called on me to follow with that enthusiastic impatience

s, so to speak, the underground passage between earth and heaven. By this starry tunnel Santa Claus manages-like the skylark- to be true to the kindred points of heaven and home. Nay, owing to cert

Yet it was not till I was half-way down the ladder that I suddenly stood still, and thought for an instant of retracing all my steps, as my companion had retraced th

s of robbery, both right and wrong; I had read the Ten Commandments in church a thousand times. And then and there, at the age of thirty-four

oking down into a lamp-lit sitting room, of the sort that in large houses often leads out of a bedroom, and is an adjunct to it. Light thus breaking from beneath our feet like a soundless explosion, showed that the trapdoor just lifted was clogged with dust and rust, and had doubtless been long disused until

and ran his roving blue eye round its furniture and ornament. The room was comfortably lined with books in that rich and human way that makes the walls seem alive; it was a deep and full, but slovenly, bookcase, of the sort that is constantly ransacked for the purposes of reading in bed. One of those stunted German stoves that look like red goblins stood in a corner, and a sideboard of walnut wood with closed doors in its lo

ried quite incohere

decanter on the table and stood looking

is permitted secrecy, trespass, almost treachery-because there are more toys where he has been. What should we feel if there were less? Down what chimney from hell would come the goblin that should take away the c

his pocket and laid it on the table beside the decanter,

heir worthlessness. I know Naboth's vineyard is as painted as Noah's Ark. I know Nathan's ewe-lamb is really a woolly baa-lamb on a wooden stand. That is why

be robbed. They may be stripped and pillaged; but not the poor lit

oard, filled them both, and lifted one of

intage or other. The master of this house may be quite proud of it. Do

swered my criminal calmly; `the

he house, th

ie about it. `I am always trying to forget what I know- and to find what I d

ill do h

rinking,' said t

k too much, th

swered, `not

`that the owner of this ho

answered; `but he

y. I had once more the notion about the gigantic genii- I fancied that enormous Egyptian faces, of the dead reds and yellows of Egypt, were staring in at each window of our li

. I come in through skylights and trapdoors to find hi

along the passage from the inner bedchamber (which seemed somehow to make it more alarming), footsteps were coming nearer. I am quite unable to say what mys

definably artistic- her dress the colour of spring and her hair of autumn leaves, with a face which, though still

ay,' said the Permeat

my latchke

in a mixture of po

,' I cried. `I know my

ging as to tell me w

urglar, `May I pres

and pleasantly. She left on my mind the impression of a certain odd mixture of shyness and sharpness; as if she knew the world well, but was still a little harmlessly afraid of it. Perhaps the possession of so ju

ly, it had taken the form of his right hand flourishing a loaded firearm in the very face of a distinguished don, and driving him to climb out of the window and cling to a waterspout. He had done it solely because the poor don had professed in theory a preference for non-existence. For this very unacademic type of argument he had been sent down. Vomiting as he was with revulsion, from the pessimism that had quailed under his pistol, he made himself a kind of fanatic of the jo

a mere masquerade or wedding banquet. Nevertheless he was not a mere pagan any more than he was a mere practical j

that they are not dead yet. The intellectuals among whom I moved were not even alive enough to fear death. They hadn't enough blood in them to be cowards. Until a pistol barrel was poked under their very noses they never eve

and yet insane details that had once reminded him of the awful subconscious reality. When the don had hung on the stone gutter, the sight of his long dangling legs, vibrating in the void like wings, somehow awoke the naked satire of the old definition of man as a two-legged animal without feathers. The wretched professor had been brought into peri

ut the continuance of the fact. What was worse, he found he had equally jeopardized a harmless lady alone in a rowing-boat, and one who had provoked death by no professions of philosophic negation. He apologized in wild gasps through all his wild wet labours to bring

as very happily married, that he not only did not care for any woman but his wife, but did not seem to care for any place but his home; but perhaps one could hardly

and asking if Mr. Smith lived there and what kind of a man he was. The London general servant is not used to the master indulging in such transcendental iron

weird way, `living in one of the tall houses in this terrace. I

ew in himself the sense of their skeleton of reality. Every stair is a ladder and every stool a leg, he said. And at other times he would play the stranger exactly in the opposite sense, and would enter by another way, so as to feel like a thief and a robber. He would break and violate his own home, as he had don

at gale upon ships by Him who made His angels winds and His messengers a flaming fire. This, at least, I know for certain. Whether such men have laughed or wept, we have laughed at their laughter as much as at their weeping. Whether they cursed or blessed the world, they have never fitted it. It is true that men have shrunk from the sting of a great satirist as if from the sting of an adder. But it is equally true that men flee from the embrace of a great optimist as from the

, 'oly!" said M

thin-skinned reverence of the agnostic. Moses Gould was as good a fellow in his way as ever lived; far kinder to his family than more refined men of pleasure, simple and steadfast in his admiration, a thoroughly wholesome animal and a thoroughly genuine character. But wherever there is conflict, crises come in which any soul, pe

ly, 'oly!" sa

d, he explained further, exuberance de

on's tale's O.K.-why, Smith is 'ot. 'E's pretty 'ot. We find him elopin' with Miss Gray (best respects!) in a cab. Well, what abart this Mrs. Smith the c

rute," growle

l bowed above his paper toys, and a wrinkle was on his forehead that might have been worry or shame. He carefully pluc