his brow, feeling himself as though
doubting his own identity. Could it be that the last week had been
real,--that everything had not been a dream? Had he in truth been
suspected of a murder and tried for his life? And then he thought of
him who had been murdered, of Mr. Bonteen, his enemy. Was he really
gone,--the man who the other day was to have been Chancellor of
the Exchequer,--the scornful, arrogant, loud, boastful man? He had
hardly thought of Mr. Bonteen before, during these weeks of his own
incarceration. He had heard all the details of the murder with a
fulness that had been at last complete. The man who had oppressed
him, and whom he had at times almost envied, was indeed gone, and the
world for awhile had believed that he, Phineas Finn, had been the
man's murderer!

And now what should be his own future life? One thing seemed certain
to him. He could never again go into the House of Commons, and sit
there, an ordinary man of business, with other ordinary men. He had
been so hacked and hewed about, so exposed to the gaze of the vulgar,
so mauled by the public, that he could never more be anything but the
wretched being who had been tried for the murder of his enemy. The
pith had been taken out of him, and he was no longer a man fit for
use. He could never more enjoy that freedom from self-consciousness,
that inner tranquillity of spirit, which are essential to public
utility. Then he remembered certain lines which had long been
familiar to him, and he repeated them aloud, with some conceit that
they were apposite to him:--

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

He sat drinking his tea, still thinking of himself,--knowing how
infinitely better it would be for him that he should indulge in no
such thought, till an idea struck him, and he got up, and, drawing
back the blinds from the open window, looked out into the night. It
was the last day of June, and the weather was very sultry; but the
night was dark, and it was now near midnight. On a sudden he took
his hat, and feeling with a smile for the latchkey which he always
carried in his pocket,--thinking of the latchkey which had been made
at Prague for the lock of a house in Northumberland Street, New Road,
he went down to the front door. "You'll be back soon, Mr. Finn, won't
you now?" said Mrs. Bunce, who had heard his step, and had remained
up, thinkin