le the doctor paid his mysterious
call I stared around me at the large shops and the banks and the gilded
hotels. Down the radiating street-vistas I could make out the facades of
halls, theatres, chapels. Trams rumbled continually in and out of the
square. They seemed to enter casually, to hesitate a few moments as if
at a loss, and then to decide with a nonchalant clang of bells that they
might as well go off somewhere else in search of something more
interesting. They were rather like human beings who are condemned to
live for ever in a place of which they are sick beyond the
expressiveness of words.

And indeed the influence of Crown Square, with its large effects of
terra cotta, plate glass, and gold letters, all under a heavy skyscape
of drab smoke, was depressing. A few very seedy men (sharply contrasting
with the fine delicacy of costly things behind plate-glass) stood
doggedly here and there in the mud, immobilized by the gloomy
enchantment of the Square. Two of them turned to look at Stirling's
motor-car and me. They gazed fixedly for a long time, and then one said,
only his lips moving:

"Has Tommy stood thee that there quart o' beer as he promised thee?"

No reply, no response of any sort, for a further long period! Then the
other said, with grim resignation:

"Ay!"

The conversation ceased, having made a little oasis in the dismal desert
of their silent scrutiny of the car. Except for an occasional stamp of
the foot they never moved. They just doggedly and indifferently stood,
blown upon by all the nipping draughts of the square, and as it might be
sinking deeper and deeper into its dejection. As for me, instead of
desolating, the harsh disconsolateness of the scene seemed to uplift me;
I savoured it with joy, as one savours the melancholy of a tragic work
of art.

"We might go down to the _Signal_ offices and worry Buchanan a bit,"
said the doctor, cheerfully, when he came back to the car. This was the
second of his inspirations.

Buchanan, of whom I had heard, was another Scotchman and the editor of
the sole daily organ of the Five Towns, an evening newspaper cried all
day in the streets and read by the entire population. Its green sheet
appeared to be a permanent waving feature of the main thoroughfares. The
offices lay round a corner close by, and as we drew up in front of them
a crowd of tattered urchins interrupted their diversions in the sodden
road to celebrate our glorious arrival by unanim