ression given was that the flesh would
be unpleasant and uncanny to the touch. The body was bent, and the neck
eternally cricked backward in the effort of the eyes to look up.
Moreover the old man was in a state of neglect. His beard alone proved
that. His clothes were dirty and had the air of concealing dirt. And
he was dressed with striking oddness. He wore boots that were not a
pair. His collar was only fastened by one button, behind; the ends
oscillated like wings; he had forgotten to fasten them in front; he had
forgotten to put on a necktie; he had forgotten the use of buttons on
all his garments. He had grown down into a child again, but Providence
had not provided him with a nurse.

Worse than these merely material phenomena was the mumbling toothless
gibber of his shrill protesting; the glassy look of idiocy from his
fatigued eyes; and the inane smile and impotent frown that alternated on
his features. He was a horrible and offensive old man. He was Time's
obscene victim. Edwin was revolted by the spectacle of the younger men
baiting him. He was astonished that they were so short-sighted as not
to be able to see the image of themselves in the old man, so imprudent
as not to think of their own future, so utterly brutalised. He wanted,
by the simple force of desire, to seclude and shelter the old man, to
protect the old man not only from the insults of stupid and crass
bullies, but from the old man himself, from his own fatuous senility.
He wanted to restore to him, by a benevolent system of pretences, the
dignity and the self-respect which he had innocently lost, and so to
keep him decent to the eye, if not to the ear, until death came to
repair its omission. And it was for his own sake, for the sake of his
own image, as much as for the sake of the old man, that he wanted to do
this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

All that flashed through his mind and heart in a second.

"I know this old gentleman, at least I know him by sight," Hilda was
saying to the policeman. "He's very well known in Turnhill as an old
Sunday school teacher, and I'm sure he ought to be on that platform."

Before her eye, and her precise and haughty voice, which had no trace of
the local accent, the young policeman was secretly abashed, and the
louts fell back sheepishly.

"Yes, he's a friend of my father's,--Mr Clayhanger, printer," said
Edwin, behind her.

The old m