chin, was doomed to find that the
source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its
crib.

He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer
brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the
reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps
other eyes could see what his eyes saw.

He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the
merciful God had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into
the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and
the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had
eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with
this bitter knowledge.

Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was
free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair
and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that
flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of
humanity that flowed above.

He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for
the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old
river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His
hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that
very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was
washing past.

He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What,
after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city?
And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson
thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There
in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees
and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow
of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of
that dark spot was here.

CHAPTER XIII.

The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had
engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the
night through.

Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the
secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he
carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was
attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from
Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Wey