ch he had come to take
a part. Already, great crowds began to fill the streets, and in
one direction myriads of people came rushing down an interminable
perspective, strewing flowers and making way for others on white horses,
when a terrible figure started from the throng, and cried out that it
was the Last Day for all the world. The cry being spread, there was a
wild hurrying on to Judgment; and the press became so great that he and
his companion (who was constantly changing, and was never the same man
two minutes together, though he never saw one man come or another go),
stood aside in a porch, fearfully surveying the multitude; in which
there were many faces that he knew, and many that he did not know, but
dreamed he did; when all at once a struggling head rose up among the
rest--livid and deadly, but the same as he had known it--and denounced
him as having appointed that direful day to happen. They closed
together. As he strove to free the hand in which he held a club, and
strike the blow he had so often thought of, he started to the knowledge
of his waking purpose and the rising of the sun.

The sun was welcome to him. There were life and motion, and a world
astir, to divide the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night--of
wakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night, with so much leisure for
the observation of his wicked thoughts--that he dreaded most. There is
no glare in the night. Even Glory shows to small advantage in the night,
upon a crowded battle-field. How then shows Glory's blood-relation,
bastard Murder!

Aye! He made no compromise, and held no secret with himself now. Murder.
He had come to do it.

'Let me get down here' he said

'Short of the town, eh!' observed the coachman.

'I may get down where I please, I suppose?'

'You got up to please yourself, and may get down to please yourself. It
won't break our hearts to lose you, and it wouldn't have broken 'em if
we'd never found you. Be a little quicker. That's all.'

The guard had alighted, and was waiting in the road to take his money.
In the jealousy and distrust of what he contemplated, he thought this
man looked at him with more than common curiosity.

'What are you staring at?' said Jonas.

'Not at a handsome man,' returned the guard. 'If you want your fortune
told, I'll tell you a bit of it. You won't be drowned. That's a
consolation for you.'

Before he could retort or turn away, the coachman put an end to the
dialogue by giving