weeks by his impassioned oratory. He was a thin dark-eyed
fellow, and he obviously knew his business. He threw himself at once
into the thick of it all, paying no attention to the stout frock-coated
gentlemen who sat on the platform, dealing out no compliments, whether
to the audience or the speakers, wasting no time at all. He told them
all that they had debts to pay, that their honour was at stake, and that
Europe was watching them. I don't know that that Face that stared at him
cared very greatly for Europe, but it is certain that a breath of
emotion passed across it, that there was a stir, a movement, a
response....

He sat down, there was a roar of applause; he regarded them
contemptuously. At that moment I caught sight of Boris Grogoff. I had
been on the watch for him. I had thought it very likely that he would be
there. Well, there he was, at the back of the crowd, listening with a
contemptuous sneer on his face, and a long golden curl poking out from
under his cap.

And then something else occurred--something really strange. I was
conscious, as one sometimes is in a crowd, that I was being stared at by
some one deliberately. I looked about me, and then, led by the
attraction of the other's gaze, I saw quite close to me, on the edge of
the crowd nearest to the platform, the Rat.

He was dressed rather jauntily in a dark suit with his cup set on one
side, and his hair shining and curled. His face glittered with soap, and
he was smiling in his usual friendly way. He gazed at me quite steadily.
My lips moved very slightly in recognition. He smiled and, I fancy,
winked.

Then, as though he had actually spoken to me, I seemed to hear him say:

"Well, good-bye.... I'm never coming to you again. Good-bye, good-bye."

It was as definite a farewell as you can have from a man, more definite
than you will have from most, as though, further, he said: "I'm gone for
good and all. I have other company and more profitable plunder. On the
back of our glorious Revolution I rise from crime to crime....
Good-bye."

I was, in sober truth, never to speak to him again. I cannot but regret
that on the last occasion when I should have a real opportunity of
looking him full in the face, he was to offer me a countenance of
friendly good-humour and amiable rascality.

I shall have, until I die, a feeling of tenderness....

I was recalled from my observation of Grogoff and the Rat by the
sensation that the waters of emotion were r