r objects
around, read the names on the shops, looked at the faces passing. Far
down the thoroughfare he caught the outline of the old church, and
beyond, the loom of the Law Courts themselves. The bell of a fire-engine
sounded, and the horses came galloping by, with the shining metal,
rattle of hoofs and hoarse shouting. Here was a sensation, real and
harmless, dignified and customary! A woman flaunting round the corner
looked up at him, and leered out: "Good-night!" Even that was customary,
tolerable. Two policemen passed, supporting between them a man the worse
for liquor, full of fight and expletives; the sight was soothing, an
ordinary thing which brought passing annoyance, interest, disgust.
It had begun to rain; he felt it on his face with pleasure--an actual
thing, not eccentric, a thing which happened every day!

He began to cross the street. Cabs were going at furious speed now
that the last omnibus had ceased to run; it distracted him to take this
actual, ordinary risk run so often every day. During that crossing of
the Strand, with the rain in his face and the cabs shooting past, he
regained for the first time his assurance, shook off this unreal sense
of being in the grip of something, and walked resolutely to the corner
of his home turning. But passing into that darker stretch, he again
stood still. A policeman had also turned into that street on the other
side. Not--surely not! Absurd! They were all alike to look at--those
fellows! Absurd! He walked on sharply, and let himself into his house.
But on his way upstairs he could not for the life of him help raising a
corner of a curtain and looking from the staircase window. The policeman
was marching solemnly, about twenty-five yards away, paying apparently
no attention to anything whatever.

IV

Keith woke at five o'clock, his usual hour, without remembrance. But
the grisly shadow started up when he entered his study, where the lamp
burned, and the fire shone, and the coffee was set ready, just as when
yesterday afternoon Larry had stood out there against the wall. For a
moment he fought against realisation; then, drinking off his coffee, sat
down sullenly at the bureau to his customary three hours' study of the
day's cases.

Not one word of his brief could he take in. It was all jumbled with
murky images and apprehensions, and for full half an hour he suffered
mental paralysis. Then the sheer necessity of knowing something of the
case which he h