he had a son had never occurred to
him. And now the knowledge overwhelmed everything else.

Little by little things shaped themselves in his mind. He saw them as
others would see them. The events of the past few years, since he had
first met Paul, began to stand out with clearness. He remembered his
own impressions on the day when Paul was first brought before him,
accused of rioting and of inciting others to deeds of violence. He
remembered, too, that he had a kind of pleasure in obtaining a hard
sentence for him. He recalled the fact that both Mr. Wilson and his
son Ned had spoken of him as an evil-dispositioned fellow, who deserved
the utmost penalty of the law, and he had fallen in with their ideas,
and had taken a kind of grim pleasure in doing so. It was a strange
business altogether. For the moment he seemed to be a kind of third
party considering a curious phenomenon. He seemed to have no direct
connection with it at all. But as he remembered after events, when he
called to mind the fact that he fought Paul at the election and failed
to condemn those who made use of slanderous gossip, then he was more
than a spectator. He realised all too vividly against whom he had been
fighting. And it had come to this: this man whom he had always
disliked, and against whom there seemed to be always a feeling of
antagonism, was revealed to him as his own son! His treatment of Jean,
bad though it was, took a second place; indeed, at that time he
troubled very little about it. He felt as though he could deal with it
later on. Everything was centred upon the situation, which was summed
up in a few words: He had a son, his son was accused of murder, and he
was the judge!

Presently he found himself in Oxford Road. He did not know how he had
come there. He had no recollection of passing through the streets
which led him there, but as he noticed the gables of Owens College he
realised where he was. He remembered some time before being an
honoured visitor at this centre of education. The principal of the
college had sought to do him honour. The professors made much of him.
He was strangely interested in the fact. Why should it be? Owens
College was nothing to him. It was simply the centre of one of the
newer universities. Why, then, did it interest him? Then he
remembered that Paul had been a student there. He had travelled all
the way from Brunford so that he might attend certain classes--and Paul
was hi