to see again the sight I saw that quiet, still evening,
framed by those high, windowless walls, from behind which sounded with
ceaseless regularity the gentle swish of the incoming tide. All sense of
retribution was drowned in the sight of Hal's evident enjoyment of his
sport. The judge had disappeared, leaving the work to be accomplished by
a savage animal loosened for the purpose.

The wretched creature flung itself again towards its only door of
escape, fought with the vehemence of despair, to be flung back again, a
hideous, bleeding mass of broken flesh. I tried to cling to Hal's arm,
but one jerk of his steel muscles flung me ten feet away.

"Keep off, you fool!" he cried. "I won't kill him. I'm keeping my head.
I shall know when to stop." And I crept away and waited.

Hal joined me a little later, wiping the blood from his face. We made
our way to a small public-house near the river, and from there Hal sent
a couple of men on whom he could rely with instructions how to act. I
never heard any more of the matter. It was a subject on which I did not
care to speak to Hal. I can only hope that good came of it.

There was a spot--it has been cleared away since to make room for the
approach to Greenwich Tunnel--it was then the entrance to a grain depot
in connection with the Milwall Docks. A curious brick well it resembled,
in the centre of which a roadway wound downward, corkscrew fashion,
disappearing at the bottom into darkness under a yawning arch. The place
possessed the curious property of being ever filled with a ceaseless
murmur, as though it were some aerial maelstrom, drawing into its
silent vacuum all wandering waves of sound from the restless human ocean
flowing round it. No single tone could one ever distinguish: it was
a mingling of all voices, heard there like the murmur of a sea-soaked
shell.

We passed through it on our return. Its work for the day was finished,
its strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons thundering
up and down its spiral way. Hal paused, leaning against the railings
that encircled its centre, and listened.

"Hark, do you not hear it, Paul?" he asked. "It is the music of
Humanity. All human notes are needful to its making: the faint wail of
the new-born, the cry of the dying thief; the beating of the hammers,
the merry trip of dancers; the clatter of the teacups, the roaring of
the streets; the crooning of the mother to her babe, the scream of the
tortured child; t